Hi, I’m Shane!

I’m a third year student at Simon Fraser University studying math and computer science. I have strong interests in systems programming, algorithms, formal methods, kernel engineering, and mechanistic interpretability. I am excited about working with others to build fault-tolerant software for large-scale deployment, democratizing technology so that everyone can benefit from it. What motivates me is being able to help people live better lives through science and technology!

When not at work, you can find me going for a run, playing piano, reading books (my current favourites are by C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien), and going on spontaneous adventures with friends around Vancouver!

My Story

When I was younger, I wasn’t especially good at math or programming. Funny enough, I even failed math in first grade (my family is always amused by this—it is a wonder how a seven-year-old could ever bomb his counting and arithmetic quizzes). In high school, the teacher sat me down and advised me to withdraw from Precalculus before getting checkmated by the exams.

Then came senior year. A mentor of mine told my parents and I about homeschooling. You can likely imagine the crime scene. Faces warped, eyebrows raised, arms crossed. Homeschool? The first-generation Chinese-Filipino immigrant dictionary doesn’t have it. But that day, I embarked on an adventure.

Truth, goodness, beauty. Trivium, quadrivium. Math throughout the ages—Babylon, Greek antiquity, the Middle East, the Western world. Euclid’s Elements, predicate calculus, logic. Mathematics and computer algorithms in their purest forms, from axioms and first-principles.

Since then, I’ve always been amazed and bewildered by how such simple ideas can turn into universal truths that benefit humanity. I find no greater joy in my work than to discover, build, and offer these gifts of invention to the world.