About Me

Hey there! This is David Liu from Saratoga, California. Currently, I’m an undergraduate studying at Stanford. I’m set to graduate with a B.S. in Computer Science in June 2014. Read a little about me, or check out some of my projects.

Computers

I love computers—I’ve been programming since I was six! I got my start when I wanted to “make my own” computer games (here’s one of them). A few years later I progressed to doing freelance jobs online.

In middle school, I discovered that I loved the challenge of working on research problems in computer science, when I began competing in science fairs. I did many research internships including at NASA Ames’ Intelligent Robotics Group, and at MIT CSAIL (as part of the Research Science Institute). In 2010 I won second place at the Intel Science Talent Search with my project on image search.

I started getting industry experience during an internship at Facebook the summer after graduating from high school (2010). One of the things I developed and launched there is the feature that combines similar notifications.

Current activities

Here are some of the things I’m up to at Stanford:

  • Entrepreneurship. I co-founded Locra, a hub for community service activity where volunteers can connect to projects, post pictures/videos, and build a verified portfolio of their service contributions.
  • Think Outside. This is an amazing community of entrepreneurs who are actively working on projects. We meet every week to exchange ideas, share what we are working on, and hack on projects.
  • BASES. The Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students is the organization that puts on many events for both aspiring and active entrepreneurs.
  • Section leading for CS106. At Stanford, section leaders essentially take the place of TAs for introductory CS classes. I led a section of CS 106A in Winter quarter of 2011. My duties included teaching students, helping with programming at the computer lab, and grading assignments and exams.
  • Rock climbing. A good friend of mine introduced me to this sport in early 2010, and since then I’ve become addicted to ascending challenging rock formations. You might find me at the Arrillaga Center’s rock wall here on campus several times a week.
  • Windsurfing. I’m learning to windsurf with Stanford Windsurfing Club!
  • Photography. I’m taking a photography class, and you can check out some of my shots.

Things I was previously involved in

I graduated from Lynbrook High School (San Jose, CA) in June 2010. During my four years there, I was involved in a range of activities:

  • I did independent computer science research. Each year I won a grand prize at the Synopsys Championship (the Silicon Valley science fair) and went on to compete at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. It’s always been a memorable experience. My research has been in information retrieval—in 9th grade, I created a system to automatically analyze music collections and display them in a 3D collection (“Acoustic Music Similarity Analysis”). The next year, I applied machine learning to develop an improved algorithm for image search by matching colors and textures. This grew into another image retrieval project in which I approached the problem from a different perspective: understanding images by classifying their contents (e.g. buildings, people, trees).
  • I was co-president of the Lynbrook Robotics Team 2009-2010, one of the largest clubs on campus.
  • I founded the Lynbrook Computer Science Club, where students gathered to discuss and participate in competitions such as the USA Computing Olympiad (USACO), American Computer Science League (ACSL), and CML Computer Science contest.
  • I competed in Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA), where I won second place nationally in Internet Application Programming, and state champion in Cybersecurity.