👋 hey there! 👋
but you can call me matt 😉
I (mostly) like computers.
I love love love teaching.
I want to teach computer science better.
(putting equity and inclusion first)
currently:
previously:
I'm a current M.S. student in computer science at UCLA, where I also did my undergrad in CS + Math-Economics. I'm particularly interested in the intersection between computer science and education. Can we teach people better with computers? Can we design computers to be easier to learn? How does accessibility and equity play into this?
Diversity, equity, and inclusion are core to everything I do.
I (mostly) enjoy working with computers: websites, programming languages, apps, backends, embedded systems, compilers, games, machine learning, data science, cloud computing, you name it! I'm also a huge fan of open-source - I'm always on GitHub!
I'm really passionate about education and outreach. My undergraduate career was focused on equitable access to CS education - through ACM at UCLA, Teach LA, BEAM, and community-building at UCLA. Kids are mostly fun to work with.
I am still occasionally interested in applied economics, particularly in development, education, healthcare, and antitrust.
In my spare time, I like to read, listen to music, and write a bad blog.
I occasionally do things, usually with computers and education. Here are the big ones.
beep bop booped in the Education Initiative; did some Slack automation, some Rails, some large-scale Ruby + Sorbet codegen & upgrading, and some open-source maintenance; wrote about an open-source contribution on CZI's Medium.
Worked to unify four different Hack-based data sources into one unified UI. Juggled React, GraphQL/Relay, and Hack/PHP work - all at Facebook scale!
In a team of 3, I built a system to save money running Kubernetes clusters; the projection for our MVP was $330k/year!
The big focus of my role was implementing a cluster autoremediation system, to find issues in Kubernetes clusters and try to automatically resolve them. Our initial focus was on more graceful autoscaling (and scale-down). I:
I was the sole intern in charge of my project for the S3 Index Engine team: a system to enable anomaly detection for thousands of internal metrics.
While I can't tell you everything I did at AWS, here's a general overview of what my role was:
As a Summer Games 2019 Intern, I was part of a team of five interns that developed a pocket-sized embedded system to combat human trafficking by hacking into boats! We apparently did well enough to staff a maritime security-focused hackathon.
click for more on me at booz allen
As the sole software developer of the team, I performed several key responsibilities:
AudioNotch is a web and mobile app that's designed to help people who suffer from tinnitus through experimental audio therapy. I put my hand in a lot of different baskets, mainly focusing on creating a new mobile app and updating their web application.
click for more on me at audionotch
I juggled several different roles as the sole intern:
I ran the largest tech organization on campus, with 250+ officers and 1500+ event attendees. It's hard to describe my role; I juggled a safe return-to-campus, EDI advocacy work, some web dev, some event planning, helped my officers grow, and tried my hand at making the tech community as inclusive and accessible as possible.
Eventually, I might write about this experience.
ACM Teach LA is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit at UCLA that aims to provide equitable access to K-12 computer science education in Los Angeles. I've worn a lot of hats at the club, from software developer, to curriculum development and instructor, to leading a dev team, and most recently, the president of the club. It's the thing I'm the most proud of at UCLA.
click for more on me at teach la
I got started in 2018 as a web developer for Teach LA, and promptly fell in love. I last served as the president of the club (2020-2021), which let me handle a broad scope of activities:
Prior to that, I was the dev team director in 2019-2020, which was a great opportunity to grow our team. Here's what I did:
click for my small stuff. but only if you want to!
If you want to see contributions I make to open-source, fragments of software projects, or just how addicted I am to GitHub, you can check out my GitHub profile.
Want a more formal breakdown? These might help:
Résumé LinkedIn GitHubnot enough, or more questions? shoot me an email at matt@matthewwang.me
(to be honest, I'm surprised you're still here)
I'm currently a Computer Science Masters student at the University of California, Los Angeles. I graduated from UCLA in 2022 with two degrees: a B.S. in Computer Science, and a B.S. in Math-Economics.
Prior to UCLA, I grew up and went to high school in Toronto, Canada. I did competitive debating and Model UN, taught computer science, math, and robotics, and dabbled in event planning, journalism, and design.
If you're interested, here are the classes that I've taken at UCLA, by area of focus.
My favourite classes have been programming languages (CS 131), automata theory (CS 181 w/ Sahai), intergenerational poverty (ECON 133), discrete math (Math 61), and intro to linguistics (LING 1). Would highly recommend!
I had fun, which is what matters.
You know, showing a bit of personality.
vim
I won't byte, I promise.