Catherine Chen

LIBERO Latent-Risk Benchmark for Robot Learning

Robot learning research in Carnegie Mellon's Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering: training ACT policies in PyTorch and building a simulated benchmark of manipulation tasks with hidden safety risks.

• Trained ACT models, evaluating action chunk sizes, model architectures, and ResNet backbones
• Developed a 10-scene, 30-task LIBERO benchmark with parameterized MJCF and unsafe task combinations
• Resolved mesh, joint, and scaling issues; wrote Python verification scripts for penetration and simulation stability

Government Document Approval Platform

Built at Shenzhen Pinghu Laboratory with Vue.js, Java, and MySQL for government document processing, moving each request through a 6-stage approval workflow shared by applicants, supervisors, and case handlers.

• Role-based access control and real-time request tracking, improving visibility into approval progress
• Cut approval turnaround time by 36%
• Integrated real-time ERP data synchronization and reporting; automated asset transfers with notifications and finance flags

512-Zone Mini-LED Backlight System

At Bohe Digital Technology, co-developed a 512-zone Mini-LED backlight system that improves contrast on 4K commercial and outdoor displays — named co-inventor on the resulting patent.

• Programmed a dimming algorithm that sets per-zone brightness from video content, auto-adjusted by an I2C ambient light sensor
• Wrote panel-specific zone mapping tables for SPI brightness data

ML Prediction of Pathogen Spread on Microplastics

Research with the Pioneer Data Science program (advised by Prof. Sanjay Ranka, University of Florida), predicting Vibrio spp. abundance on microplastics from 483 collected data points.

• Built an artificial neural network reaching 87% accuracy
• Published in CPCI

Bioinformatics of Glucose Markers in Diabetes

Statistical analysis identifying associations between glucose biomarkers and disease-related functions, under the guidance of Dr. Zhang Xingjian (Yale University).

• Regression, t-tests, and ANOVA across diabetes datasets
• Published in the International Journal of High School Research

Tic-Tac-Toe FSM

Sequential logic design and verification on FPGA: a tic-tac-toe finite state machine written two ways in SystemVerilog, verified in simulation, and run on real hardware.

• Two FSM implementations — structural D flip-flops and gates, and behavioral enumerated states — compared on LUTs, registers, and Fmax in Vivado
• Testbench achieving 92% line coverage in VCS
• Integrated on a 100 MHz Spartan-7 FPGA with synchronized button/switch inputs and eight 7-segment displays

Battleship Shot Scorer

Hierarchical RTL design on FPGA: a combinational circuit in SystemVerilog that scores shots on a 10×10 Battleship board, detecting hits, near-misses, misses, and invalid inputs while displaying hit counts on a 7-segment display.

• 3×3 "Big Bomb" shots (up to 9 cells) with edge-adjacent near-miss detection and hit-over-near-miss priority
• 4-level RTL hierarchy (10 modules, 63 instances), reusing a ship-lookup module 45 times; verified on FPGA

Braille Pattern Recognizer

Gate-level combinational logic on FPGA: a 6-input, 2-output Braille classifier derived from a 64-row truth table, with both outputs minimized using 6-variable K-maps.

• POS and SOP circuits in structural SystemVerilog using 29 NOR and 28 NAND gates, respectively
• Verified with testbenches and synthesized both to 2 Slice LUTs each in Vivado

Dynamic Allocator & Concurrent Proxy

Two systems programming projects in C: a 64-bit dynamic memory allocator and a multithreaded HTTP proxy with a shared cache.

• Allocator using segregated explicit free lists with boundary-tag coalescing and footerless allocated blocks, achieving 74% memory utilization at 11.3M ops/s
• Proxy with a thread pool and a 1 MiB LRU cache guarded by reader-writer locks, serving concurrent clients through an I/O layer resilient to partial reads and short counts

Scotty Crossing

A Crossy Road clone built with plain Canvas 2D, using a chunky isometric projection to fake a 2.5D look. Hop across roads and rivers, dodge traffic, and ride logs to get as far as you can.

• Endless procedurally generated lanes with ramping difficulty
• No libraries or build step — runs as a static page

Pokédex Arena

A three-mode Pokémon app built on PokeAPI (free, keyless): look up any Pokémon's stats and types, simulate a type-based battle with a live stat chart, or play a guess-the-Pokémon game with hints and scoring.

• Live type-effectiveness engine using PokeAPI's own damage-relation data
• Hand-built SVG stat comparison chart — no charting library

Ask Qi

A chatbot version of me. A Python/Flask backend deployed on Render holds my Gemini API key and my persona; this static page just sends questions over fetch() and renders the JSON that comes back — so the key never reaches the browser.

• Secrets, persona, and input validation all live server-side, where visitors can't edit them
• Per-IP rate limiting, and a plain-language JSON error for every failure mode

Image Processing Playground

Upload an image and watch classic computer vision algorithms transform it: grayscale, Gaussian blur, Canny edge detection, sharpening and Hough line detection. A Flask backend runs OpenCV on every request, and the page sends the image and slider settings over fetch().

• Debounced sliders, with a guard so a slow reply never overwrites a newer one
• Server-side validation of file type, image contents and every parameter range

Abilitopia Team Matching Platform

A website using a computational matching algorithm to pair students with teammates for class projects and competitions based on skill level, grades, working dynamics, and MBTI profile.

• Generated intelligent, like-minded team matches
• Included online learning resources for remote areas

SCIE Mathematics for Everyone Club

Founded and led a club teaching A-level coursework and computational algorithms, designing two Arduino devices — one to assist people with dyslexia and one to monitor study environments.

• Showcased to 2,000+ teachers and students across campus

High School Badminton Team Captain

Led the school badminton team as team captain.

Track and Field Athlete

• Achieved school records in the girls' individual 300m and 4x100m relay
• Placed 3rd (Futian District) and 6th (Shenzhen City) in the 6x800m relay
• Currently training for a marathon