I'm Mao Li.

I'm a professionally trained software developer and an interdisciplinary explorer. I believe the power of computer science in solving challenges across disciplines.

About Me

The pursuit of true self.

Once I had wished I could find "the one" calling or "the true" passion, but I failed devastatingly. My exploration only pushes me further down the uncertainty. Yet even worse, I genuinely enjoy it.

Developer

I apply computer science to
solve real-world problems.

Computer science empowers me to turn my ideas into a positive impact. As a software engineer at Meta, I contribute to products that help people build community and bring the world closer together. As a student researcher, I worked on algorithms that generalize neural networks to unseen domains.

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Explorer

I enjoy exploring
the boundless world.

I have traveled to 17 countries across three continents. I have practiced swimming and played table tennis for over ten years. I have learned Chinese calligraphy and traditional painting since childhood. Racing, entrepreneurship, literature, debate, surfing, philosophy... my tried and to-try list is always expanding.

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"竹杖芒鞋轻胜马,谁怕,一蓑烟雨任平生。"

苏轼,《定风波》

Education

The pursuit of true knowledge.

It's my honor to attend two of the best universities in the field of engineering. They have turned mirrors into windows, limits into freedom.

Experiences

The pursuit of positive impact.

I am privileged by the social lottery to have my knowledge, resource, and ability. It is my responsibility to create and innovate for those who aren't as lucky.

Software Engineer

Build products that
bring the world closer.

I'm always passionate about the chemical reaction between humanity and technology. In 2022, I started my career as a software engineer at Meta Platforms.

I take part in building next evolution of social technologies that help peope connect, find communities and grow business. Learn more

Web Dev

System

Mobile

AR/VR

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Triple C

Create a community for
entrepreneurship.

From 2019 to 2020, I was the president of Triple C, one of UCSD's largest student incubator for CS/DS projects. As an engineering community, we help students turn ideas into projects and turn projects into business.

We foster geek and entrepreneur culture by organizing coding parties, tech workshops, and internal career fairs. We tunnel academic, industrial, and financial resources for each project's needs. Learn more

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Members

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Funding

Projects

Turn ideas into reality.

As a firm believer in possibilities, I love exploring the limitless potentials of crazy, unprecedented ideas.

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Research

DebateStar

Utilized cutting edge NLP tools and research to analyze the persuasiveness of debate under the guidance of prof. Jingbo Shang.

Feature Extraction

Tailored GloVe embedding and attention mechanisms to extract relevant information from the debate.

Recurrent Neural Net

Implemented LSTM to capture long-term dependency within debate speeches and to gain insight into their logical structure.

DebateStar Interactive Platform

UCSD, HSDI

2020 Winter - 2020 Spring

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Software Engineering

Blog App

Full Stack Web Development

Used vanilla HTML/CSS/Javascript, Python Flask, SQLite, and AWS to build a modern, fully-functional, minimalist blog app.

Minimalist User Interface

Designed and implemented a clean and minimalist user interface with pure modern HTML/CSS.

Versatile Backend Server

Developed authentication, CRUD, and internal messaging backend server with Flask and SQLite. Deployed with AWS EC2, Gunicorn, and Nginx.

Blog Web App

Independent

2019 Summer

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Machine Learning

Recommender System

Built a purchase prediction and category classifier based on Yelp and Amazon dataset.

Learn more
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Research

TradeBot

Applied deep reinforcement learning to build a competitive market maker.

Learn more
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Academic

CSE/DSC Tutor

Tutored DSC30 data structure and CSE158 recommender system.

Learn more

"The person that I was, I am, and I will be, has always stayed in the universe of my writings."

Articles

Thanks for visiting my digital world.

Please find the hidden Easter egg if you are interested to connect.