Hello! I am

Derek Li

About Me!

I am a second-year undergraduate student at the University of California, San Diego. My major is Computer Engineering. I am from the San Francisco Bay Area, and I'm interested in robotics, machine learning, data science, and human-computer interaction.

Projects

Analysis of Lifestyle Factors and Sleep Quality

As part of my group's final project for COGS 108 (Data Science in Practice) at UCSD, we analyzed the relationship between various lifestyle factors (such as exercise, stress, and BMI) and sleep quality using the NHIS 2024 dataset provided by the CDC. We performed data cleaning, exploratory data analysis, statistical inference testing, and built predictive machine learning models to understand how these factors impact sleep quality. We used Python (Pandas, Matplotlib, Seaborn, and Scikit-learn) for our analysis.

Our final report and code are available on GitHub. Click here to view a public archive of our work! Alternatively, you can view the final Jupyter notebook directly.

Our group earned a score of 18/18 (100%) on our project.

RPCParadox

I am working on RPCParadox, an open-source desktop application that allows users to display their activity in Paradox Interactive games (such as Stellaris and Hearts of Iron IV) on their Discord profile using Rich Presence. The application is written in C# using .NET 9.0.

The project is available on GitHub. Click here to view the repository!

Website for the United Effort Organization

I volunteer to help develop the website for the United Effort Organization, a non-profit organization that connects low-income and unhoused community members with resources in Santa Clara County. I mainly work on the Benefits Eligibility Tool, which helps users determine which public benefits they may be eligible for, as there doesn't exist a single tool that does this.

The website is built using Liquid HTML, JS, Netlify, and 11ty. The backend is built and integrated using Airtable. Click here to visit the website, and here to view the GitHub repository!

Publications

Work Experience

Hardware Engineer I (Intern), Cisco Systems June 2026 – September 2026

Did all sorts of fun stuff with Cisco's Enterprise Hardware Switching team the summer after my first year at UCSD! In particular, my work involved developing test automation software, hardware design validation testing (DVT) for enterprise switching technologies, and streamlining the team's lab testing workflow by migrating their lab machines from Windows to Linux on Cisco UCS.

A major part of my role was creating new, user-friendly, and robust software for my team to manage complex test data. I developed my solution with a PostgreSQL database, React frontend, and REST API ("AI Ready"-ifying test data, as the team liked to put it). After winning Cisco's Innovation 2026 (a patent design contest for interns, co-ops, and early-career employees), I've also worked with a few colleagues to submit a patent proposal to the company patent committee, under the guidance of Cisco Fellow Joel Goergen (really cool guy)! Unfortunately, until further notice, the patent proposal is considered highly confidential, so please don't ask me too much about the details...

I will say that although this is officially a hardware engineering internship on a hardware team, I've mostly been brought on to do software engineering work.

Intern, TCL Research America July 2024 – February 2025

Under the guidance of Research Assistant Ugur Demir and Professor Aggelos K. Katsaggelos of Northwestern University, I worked on a cost-effective video generation framework for flexible spatial and temporal outputs using pre-trained generative AI models. I developed a GPU sharding solution in Python and PyTorch to efficiently utilize NVIDIA A6000 GPUs, improving the scalability of training generative AI video models. Our team's solution allows researchers to generate videos at arbitrary spatial and temporal resolutions without the need for expensive retraining of existing models. I presented my team's results at the International Conference on Computing, Networking, and Communications (ICNC) 2025 in Honolulu, Hawaii. See Publications for more details.

Coursework

I am taking coursework related to my major of Computer Engineering. I entered the University of California, San Diego (Jacobs School of Engineering, Department of Computer Science and Engineering) as a first-year student in Fall 2025. I currently have senior standing and anticipate completing my Bachelor of Science degree in June 2029.

I've completed courses in: data structures and algorithms, data science, discrete mathematics, systems programming (C in Linux), brain-computer interfaces, linear algebra, multivariate calculus, computer organization, engineering probability and statistics, differential equations, and computer vision. As of the end of Summer 2026, I have a cumulative GPA of 3.98. Upon my enrollment, I received the Regents Scholarship, a prestigious merit-based scholarship.

Prior to enrolling at UCSD, I completed extensive coursework at BASIS Independent Silicon Valley, my high school. I had a final weighted GPA of 4.88 and an unweighted GPA of 4.00. I took Advanced Placement (AP) courses in the following subjects, equivalent to college-level courses: Calculus (BC, equivalent to both first and second semester college calculus), Statistics, Computer Science A (Java), Physics (including calculus-based mechanics and electricity/magnetism), Biology, English Language and Composition, and more. I took in total 14 AP exams and received a score of 5 on all of them.

Some Assorted Fun Facts

  • I currently hold the high score in Wii Sports Resort Frisbee Golf in my dorm among my floormates for all three Resort 3-hole courses and the nine-hole Resort course. Unfortunately, I no longer hold the Frisbee Dog high score.
    • Update: upon seeing this on my website, my floormates, in a fit of pure tomfoolery, committed to beating my high score. I no longer hold the high score for some of the courses, but I believe I still hold most of them.
    • Also, they still owe me my Wii Remotes and my copies of Wii Sports Resort and Wii Party. I forgot to ask for them back at the end of freshman year.
  • I have flown on an Airbus A380 exactly three times: once on Air France from New York to Paris and twice on British Airways from San Francisco to London and back. The Air France flight was pleasant as the plane was essentially empty, meaning I could stretch out on a row of seats. I am significantly less fond of my experience with British Airways. Some experiences are better left undescribed.
  • In my youth soccer league (U11), my team had the opportunity to play in the silver medal match of the league's round-robin tournament. I was asked to play goalkeeper for the first half, and despite having multiple shots on target taken against me, I did not concede a single goal. I was subbed out for the second half, and my team proceeded to concede five goals. I am currently 19 years old and still think about this more often than I should.
  • I used to play golf in high school. I was pretty good at some point, but the last time I played with my friends at a course (a year or so after I stopped playing recreationally), I was quite terrible.
  • Somehow, I feel like most of the people talking about AI, computing, and programming on social media do not actually know much about any of the three. I have my theories.

Assorted Minor Works

  • Funsort: a Python package with some serious and some funny sorting algorithms. Click here to view the repository! Click here to view the package on PyPI (and for the installation command)!
  • BrainCrafterInterface: part of my group's final project for COGS 189 (Brain-Computer Interfaces) at UCSD. My group developed a BCI that allows users to control parts of the Minecraft video game by stomping their feet. We trained a classifier to identify foot stomp motor imagery in real time using EEG data we collected with the OpenBCI Cyton Biosensing Board. Click here to view the repository! If you have a UCSD email address, you can click here to view a video demonstration of our work, or click here to view our final report!
  • WorstCalculator: a joke Python app that is, as the name implies, a very bad calculator. It is intended as a parody of fully vibe-coded applications that are often more style than substance. Click here to view the repository!
  • TaskForceZulu and BmobSquad: the names of my high school VEX Robotics Competition team in the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 seasons, respectively. I'm not sure if I'm very proud of the code I wrote for our robots; it's highly unpolished and was about what one would expect from a high schooler who had no practical experience with C++ and had to write the robot software in that language because the VEX V5 API only supports C++. Technically it also supports their own block-coding language, but I mean, come on. We did pretty decently at competitions, if I do say so myself. We made it to state championships in the 2021-2022 season. Click here to view the repository for TaskForceZulu, and click here to view the repository for BmobSquad!
  • Translator: by absolutely no means a good product. As far as I can recall, this was my first ever attempt at building any sort of desktop app on my own dating back to 2021. It's a simple GUI wrapper around the Google Translate API, and its code is definitely of subpar quality. I look at it simply to cringe a bit. Click here to view the repository!

Contact Me!

You can reach me at [email protected]. If you would like my personal phone number, personal email, or resume, please email me.

Note: I have two UCSD email addresses; the other one is not listed on this website. Both email addresses are valid and go to the same inbox. The above email address is an email alias and is preferred for general contact. The other (non-public) email address is used for official and internal University-related matters, as it is my official UCSD email address and student username.