I am a first year PhD student in Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), co-advised by Prof. Karrie Karahalios and Prof. Hari Sundaram. My current research focuses on collective decision making mechanism design and decision making through data visualizations. During my Masters at UIUC, I worked with Prof. Aditya Parameswaran and Prof. Karrie Karahalios on the Dataspread Project.
My general research interest investigates how human interacts with and make decisions through technology-mediated instruments. These topics are generlly in the intersection between people (HCI), data (Database Systems) and system design (Software). I am a full-stack web developer and a technology educator when not doing research.
I received my B.Sc degree from The Department of Computer Science and Engineering at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. I was a research student in The Husky Team supervised by Prof. James Cheng. I worked on distributed machine learning algorithms in nearest-neighbor search during my undergraduate studies.
In the past, I interned at two great compaines: Salesforce and KKBOX.
Click here for my CV.
▋Education
- The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- PhD in Computer Science (Exp. 2025) - The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Master of Science in Computer Science - Master Thesis: “Comparing Quadratic Voting and Likert Surveys” - The Chinese University of Hong Kong
- Bachelor of Science in Computer Science
- Minor in Business Economics
- Final Year Project: “Efficient Nearest Neighbors Search in Distributed Manner." - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Exchange Student, Computer Science - Princeton University
- Short-term Exchange Visiting Student, Whitman College
▋Publication
[4] Ti-Chung Cheng*, Tiffany Wenting Li*, Yi-Hung Chou, Karrie Karahalios, Hari Sundaram ““I can show what I really like.": Eliciting Preferences via Quadratic Voting” Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW), 2021.
[3] Vinay Koshy, Joon Sung Park, Ti-Chung Cheng, Karrie Karahalios. “‘We Just Use What They Give Us’: Understanding Passenger User Perspectives in Smart Homes” Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2021.
[2] Pingjing Yang, Ti-Chung Cheng*, Sajjadur Rahman*, Mangesh Bendre, Karrie Karahalios, Aditya Parameswaran. “Understanding Data Analysis Workflows on Spreadsheets: Roadblocks and Opportunities” Proceedings of Workshop on Human-In-the-Loop Data Analytics (HILDA), 2020.
[1] Jinfeng Li, Xiao Yan, Jian Zhang, An Xu, James Cheng, Jie Liu, Kelvin Ng, and Ti-Chung Cheng. “A General and Efficient Querying Method for Learning to Hash” In Proceedings of the 37th ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data (SIGMOD), 2018.
▋Professional Experience
Software Engineering Intern
- Implemented VSCode IntelliSense for LWC Metadata file, reducing development time by 2x
- Contributed to Open Source RedHat XML VSCode extension
Teaching Assistant
- CS411 Database Systems (FA20)
- CS242 Programming Studio Lead (FA19, SP20)
- CS242 Programming Studio (FA18)
Software Engineering Intern
- Build performance dashboards and design metrics for caching infra on scales of billion requests per day.
- Resolve performance issues for one of the most used API calls in Salesforce.
Research Assistant
- Supervisor: Prof. Karrie Karahalios
- Research on providing a better tabular interface for relational databases
Assistant Engineer
- KKBOX is an Asian online music streaming company with 40M tracks and 3.6M active users
- Responsible for initial survey and model creation for Smart Speakers
- In charge of training data creation and testing data to train Natural Language Understanding
- Promising intention and entity recognition during early controlled stages
Research Student
- Supervisor: Prof. James Cheng
- Involved in GQR: A General and Efficient Querying Method for Learning to Hash.
- Final year project: "Efficient Nearest Neighbors Search in Distributed Manner."
- Summer Research Intern Project: "Implementation and Analysis of Collision Counting LSH on Husky."
Web Administrator
Summer Research Intern
- Supervisor: Prof. Ann, Hsing-Yen
- Developed the Bad Domain Tracking System: retrieves and analyzes malicious fast-flux domains caught by honeypots
▋Teaching Experience
CS 411 Database Systems
- Instructor: Prof. Abdussalam Alawini
- Assisted in large-scale (350+ student) flipped classroom activites.
- Designed assignments, activites and exams for the course.
CS 242 Programming Studio
- Instructor: Prof. Michael Woodley
- Head TA for two semesters redesigning course materials and assignments
- Lead discussion sessions and manage administrative matters for 200+ students
CSCI 2040 Intro to Python
- Instructor: Prof. John C.S. Lui
- Designed final group project for the course of 110 students on financial data analytics using Python
- Lead discussion sessions and manage administrative matters for 200+ students
▋Extra-Curriculum
- The news paper targeted elementry and junior high students and have over 100K subscribers
- Writes a monthly column on technology and HCI
Initiator and coordinator
- Founded this platform to connect CS and non-CS students academically through sharing and technical workshops
- Manages a team of 20 students working on The Circle Project and official website for Taiwanese Student Association
- Created a guide for incoming freshmen with over 6000+ views
Information Officer
- Launched the organization's online service and homepage.
- Assisted in technical setups for activities by the student association.
Project Coordinator
- Volunteered in Nepal to understand and evaluate needs of local people and provide solutions. [Report] [Journal]
- Volunteering proposal approved by the university with funding support.
- Awarded Reaching Out Award and Scholarship by the HKSAR [News Coverage]
- Awarded Taiwan Ministry of Education 2015 National iYouth Best Writing in Volunteering [News Coverage]
▋Language & Skills
- Language: Native in Mandarin, Professional in English, elementary Cantonese and Taiwanese
- Programming Skills: Proficient in C/C++ and Python. Competent in Java, JavaScript, HTML, CSS
- Application Skills: Experienced in MEN framework, Node.js, Husky, MySQL and MongoDB
- Software and Other Skills: Experienced in Photoshop and photography (check out my flickr!) Feel free to visit my LinkedIn.
