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Curriculum Vitae

NameLiang (Leon) Lu
Emaillianglu at cs dot cmu dot edu
Websitechaosarium.xyz
Githubgithub.com/chaosarium
Portfoliochaosarium.xyz/portfolio
LinkedInlinkedin.com/in/leonlianglu
H5 Carnegie Mellon University
H6 B.S. in Computer Science, Pittsburgh, PA, May 2022 – Present
Expected GraduationDec 2025
Planned ConcentrationsLanguage Technology and Computer Systems
Current GPA4.00/4.00
HonorsDean’s List, High Honors, every semester so far
Activities and SocietiesFlutonium (flute ensemble), IRIS Lunar Rover
Coursework

CMU Course Wiki

Course experiences (and perhaps along with other commitments) at CM, grouped by semesters. Note these are only my personal experiences...

2/22/2025

15-411 Compiler Design
15-445 Database Systems
11-711 Advanced Natural Language Processing
15-213 Computer Systems
15-312 Foundations of Programming Languages
15-440 Distributed Systems
15-451 Algorithm Design and Analysis
15-210 Parallel and Sequential Data Structures and Algorithms
15-251 Great Ideas in Theoretical Computer Science
15-122 Principles of Imperative Computation
15-150 Principles of Functional Programming
15-113 Special Topics in Applied Python Programming
21-325 Probability
21-127 Concepts of Mathematics
21-241 Matrices and Linear Transformations
21-259 Calculus in Three Dimensions
80-285 Natural Language Syntax
80-180 Nature of Language
85-102 Introduction to Psychology
98-242 Introduction to Esoteric Programming Languages
H5 Nansha College Preparatory Academy
H6 High School, Aug 2018 – Jun 2022
GPA4.00/4.00
Weighted GPA4.61
Activities, Societies, and HonorsNational Honor Society ΓΚΧ, Tri-M Music Honor Society (Vice President), South China Model United Nations (Secretary-General), Tech Solution Team (Manager), Student Government, Drama, Debate Team, Student Government, Wind Ensemble, Choir, China Thinks Big, Valedictorian
Advanced Placement5 on AP Physics I, AP Physics II, AP Physics C Mechanics, AP Physics C Electromagnetism, AP Calculus AB, AP Calculus BC, AP Microeconomics, AP Macroeconomics, AP Chemistry, AP Statistics, AP Computer Science Principles, AP Seminar, AP Computer Science A, AP Biology, AP Research

H2 Publications

2024Liang Lu, Peirong Xie, and David R. Mortensen.
Semisupervised Neural Proto-Language Reconstruction.
The 62nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2024) (Best Paper).
2024Liang Lu, Jingzhi Wang, and David R. Mortensen.
Improved Neural Protoform Reconstruction via Reflex Prediction.
The 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024).
2024Mihir Mongia, Tyler M. Yasaka, Yudong Liu, Mustafa Guler, Liang Lu, Aditya Bhagwat, Bahar Behsaz, Mingxun Wang, Pieter C. Dorrestein, and Hosein Mohimani.
Fast Mass Spectrometry Search and Clustering of Untargeted Metabolomics Data.
Nature Biotechnology, Jan 2024.
H5 Lectures:

H2 Skills

ProgrammingRust, C, C++, Python, Go, JavaScript, TypeScript, SQL, GraphQL, Standard ML, OCaml, x86-64 assembly, HTML, CSS, Java, GraphQL, jq
TechnologiesData and ML: PyTorch, NumPy, Pandas, NLP, Deep Learning, Neural Networks, Research, Matplotlib, seaborn; Systems: Compiler Design & Engineering, Database Engineering; Full-Stack: Node.js, Axum, Express.js, Flask, Svelte, React, Electron, MongoDB, REST API; General: Algorithms, Git, Regex, Linux, LaTeX
LanguagesFluent: English (TOEFL 114), Mandarin, Cantonese; Fair: French; Learning: Japanese, Esperanto
As a HobbyistGraphic design, Web design, Video editing, Photography, Flute performance, Music arrangement, Conducting, Music composition, Algorithmic Art, Data visualisation
H5 Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science
H6 Teaching Assistant, 15-251 Great Theoretical Ideas in Computer Science, Aug 2024 – Dec 2024
  • Taught weekly recitations about challenging theoretical concepts such as Turing Machines, decidability, graph theory, and P vs. NP
  • Researched and developed information retrieval system for the course’s platform, PandaNotes, in collaboration with the professor and other course staff
  • Provided one-on-one mentoring sessions to help mentees succeed in the course
H5 Vertex, Inc.
H6 Software Development Engineer Intern, Jun 2024 – Aug 2024
  • Designed and implemented an interpreter for a custom configuration language to automate data flow from API sources into a data warehouse, speeding up data ingestion workflow by 12 times and saving 10+ hours every week for the team
  • Developed mechanisms for the interpreter to handle API limitations such as page size limits and recover from rate limits and network failures, allowing reliable processing of 1,000,000+ rows of data
  • Provisioned cloud infrastructure using Terraform and GitHub Action to sync developer data from 2k+ repositories with one button
  • Powered productivity metrics dashboards updated and viewed weekly by 20+ senior leaders, enabling data-driven decisions for 800+ developers to improve software development efficiency and code quality
H5 Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science
H6 Teaching Assistant, 15-150 Principles of Functional Programming, Aug 2023 – May 2023
  • Designed and graded homework assignments on functional programming in the Standard ML programming language
  • Taught labs to 30+ students and held weekly office hours to help students understand course content and appreciate functional programming
H5 Mohimani Lab, Carnegie Mellon University
H6 Software Developer Research Assistant, Jan – May 2023
  • Developed a mass spectrum database with Professor Hosein Mohimani’s team to index, cluster, and query against terabyte-scale genomics and metabolomics datasets for antibiotics discovery (Rust, 80k lines, fully documented and unit-tested code base)
  • Optimized the large-scale tandem mass spectrometry data clustering algorithm Networking+ and improved accuracy of the memory-efficient mass spectrometry search tool MASST+, achieving speed ≥ 2 orders of magnitude faster than existing tools
  • Implemented index data structures and caching strategies for spectrum databases while performing testing and profiling to ensure their correctness and efficiency
  • Created data visualizations to analyze software performance
  • One publication in Nature Biotechnology: Fast mass spectrometry search and clustering of untargeted metabolomics data
H5 Proto Language Reconstruction Project, LLab at CMU Language Technology Institute
H6 Student Researcher / Research Intern, Summer 2023; Research Group Member, Since Jan 2023
  • Pioneering novel neural techniques to improve reconstructions of protolanguage word forms, advised by Professor David R. Mortensen
  • Achieved 3% and 1% accuracy improvement on Middle Chinese and Latin reconstruction respectively compared to state-of-the-art methods (Python, PyTorch, 10k lines, 4,000+ experiments on WandB)
  • Developed a new neural architecture for the new NLP task semisupervised protoform reconstruction and achieved accuracy 2 to 7 percentage points higher than all baseline methods, advancing the field of computational historical linguistics
  • LREC-COLING 2024 paper: Improved Neural Protoform Reconstruction via Reflex Prediction
  • ACL 2024 paper: Semisupervised Neural Proto-Language Reconstruction
H5 Nansha College Preparatory Academy (High School)
H6 Web Developer & Server Manager, 2019 - 2022
  • Developed and maintained multiple online booking systems for rooms and studios on campus (JavaScript)
  • Facilitated collaboration and incorporated code contributions
H5 Berkeley Bay Area Writing Project
H6 IT Support Specialist, Guangzhou, July 2019
  • Assisted participants and staff with computing-related issues
  • Facilitate publicity of the program via media technology (videos, photos, etc.)
H5 Question Answering RAG System for CMU and LTI
H6 Homework 2, 11-711 Advanced NLP, Feb 2024 - Mar 2024, team of 2
  • Scrapped and cleaned webpage data to create a corpus containing information about the history, events, courses, culture, etc. of CMU, SCS, and LTI
  • Developed a Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) system that retrieves information from the corpus to answer questions
  • Annotated question-answer pairs and performed extensive experiments to test different LLMs and prompting techniques
  • Achieved the best performance among all submissions in the class
H5 Co Language and Compiler
H6 Final project, 15-411 Compiler Design, Jan 2024 - May 2024, team of 2
  • Designed the Co programming language, which allows programmers to write concurrent programs while building on top of the simplicity and safety of C0
  • Implemented a compiler for Co, with support for concurrency features like coroutines, channels, and mutexes
H5 C0 Compiler
H6 Semester-long project, 15-411 Compiler Design, Jan 2024 - Present, team of 2
  • Designed and implemented a C0 (a memory-safe subset of C) to x86-64 compiler in Rust (in a team of 2)
  • Made 400+ commits, opened 40+ pull requests, passed 10,000+ test cases
H5 BusTub
H6 A working database! Class project, 15-445 Database Systems, Jan 2024 - Present, solo
  • Completed the implementation of a relational database management system (RDBMS)
  • Implemented key components of the RDBMS including a buffer pool manager, a disk-backed hash index (extendible hashing), an execution engine with query optimization, and an optimistic multi-version concurrency control scheme
H5 Influx
H6 Building a new language learning app
  • Designing and creating an open-source, NLP-enhanced, content-based language learning app
  • Developing algorithms and data structures for text processing (Rust), multi-lingual tokenization and lemmatization integrations (Python), back-end with REST API (Rust, Axum, SurrealDB), and front-end user interfaces (Svelte, TypeScript)
H5 15-213 Computer Systems Class Projects, May 2023 - Aug 2023, solo
H6 Various system-level programming projects
  • a high-utilization dynamic memory allocator
  • a shell that supports running and managing concurrent foreground and background jobs
  • a multi-threaded TCP/IP proxy server with cache
  • a cache simulator
  • cache-optimized functions for matrix computation (performance ranked #1 in class leaderboard)
H5 NCPA room reservation system
H6 Oct 2019 - May 2022, solo

Implemented and maintained online booking systems for music practice rooms and art studios on campus (JavaScript, Express.js); managed Git repository, performed code review, and incorporated code contributions.

H2 Honors & Awards

Aug 2024Best Paper Award (Non-Publicized), The 62nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2024)
Fall 2023Dean’s List, High Honors, Carnegie Mellon University
Dec 2023Honorable Mention, 2024 Undergraduate Researcher Award, Computing Research Association
Spring 2023Dean’s List, High Honors, Carnegie Mellon University
Fall 2022Dean’s List, High Honors, Carnegie Mellon University
20212021 Global Citizenship Award, East Asia Regional Council of Schools
2021First prize (open round top 10%) and Silver medal (final round), International Linguistics Olympiad China
2021Gold Medal and Global Top 150, Sir Isaac Newton Physics Contest
2021Distinction and School Champion, CEMC Hypatia Contest
2021Distinction and School Champion, CEMC Euclid Contest
2021Distinction, CEMC Fermat Contest
2021Silver, Canadian Chemistry Contest
2021First Prize (individual) and Humanitarian Prize (team), China Thinks Big
2020National Honor Society
2020Champion, 2020 Shenzhen Fall Tournament, National High School Debate League of China
2019Distinction, School Champion, and Honour Rolls Group III, CEMC Fryer Contest
2019Distinction, School Champion, and Honour Rolls Group IV, CEMC Pascal Contest
2019Quarter-Finalist, 2019 Guangzhou Spring Tournament, National High School Debate League of China
H5 IRIS Lunar Rover
H6 Dec 2022 – Jan 2023
  • Helped develop and test missing control protocol to operate the IRIS rover on the moon
  • IRIS was launched to the moon in Jan. 2024 with the Peregrine Lander
H5 Tech Solution Team, NCPA
H6 Manager, 2019 – 2021; Member, 2018 – 2022
  • Directed IT Helpdesk to help solve tech problems on campus
  • Assisted events held by other student organizations using technology
  • Provided service at the IT Helpdesk for 120+ hours
H5 South China Model United Nations (SCMUN)
H6 Secretary-General, 2021 - 2022; Deputy Secretary-General, 2019 - 2021; Chair, 2019
  • Organized, directed, and managed the three-day inter-school SCMUN X conference
  • Assisted the Secretary-General in organizing and directing the SCMUN IX conference
  • Chaired the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) at the SCMUN VIII conference
  • Revised SCMUN’s design system
H5 Tri-M Music Honor Society, NCPA
H6 Vice-President, 2020 - 2021; Music Director, 2020 - 2021; Member, 2019 - 2022
  • Planned charity music events
  • Arranged music and conducted music performances
  • Entertained elderly people in the local community, helped disabled children succeed in music, and raised funds for charity organizations
H5 Student Government, NCPA
H6 Representative, 2018-2019; Promotion Team, 2019-2020; Representative, 2020-2021
  • Represented students’ voices and pushed for changes to improve students’ life
  • Led collaborations with other student organizations to organize events for the student body
  • Designed promotional materials

H2 Theatre

2021Richard Green / Mr. Frederick Polk in The Murder Mystery at the Murder Mystery
2019Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol

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