I'm Jianding — a fourth-year CS student at UBC, completing it as a second degree after studying philosophy and working in public administration. I kept seeing how profoundly technology shapes the systems that matter to people, and I wanted to be someone who understands them deeply and builds them thoughtfully.
- Continuing to develop Hearth through UBC's Diversity in CS Project Hub, with the goal of real deployment at women's shelters
- Working as a Full Stack Developer at UBC's School of Population and Public Health
- Exploring AWS and cloud infrastructure
- Exploring ML and AI safety through ARENA and UBC AI Safety
| Hearth | Privacy-first, on-device multilingual voice translation PWA for women's shelter staff and residents. 🏆 1st place at youCode 2026 (SAP & Amazon sponsored). Built with Next.js, FastAPI, Cohere Tiny Aya, and OpenAI Whisper. |
| InsightUBC | Full-stack course and room data platform with 20 REST endpoints, 64,000+ searchable records, and 93% test coverage across 261 tests. |
| StudyNest | Customizable widget-based focus workspace. 🥈 Runner-up at HCI Course Demo Showcase. Built with React, TypeScript, and Tailwind. |
| Mentra | AI-powered journaling app with reflective feedback via Gemini 2.0 Flash. Built at cmd-f 2025. |
Outside of coding, I enjoy running, cooking, blogging, and exploring hidden gems in the city and nature. I speak English, Mandarin and Chongqing dialect fluently and Cantonese effectively, and am learning Japanese and Spanish sporadically.
