Alexander Chia

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Profile

Finished college with highest honors in a record 2 years, prior job experience at Google, currently doing novel research in computer graphics with gaming giant Square Enix in Tokyo.

Achievements include being top 6 worldwide in Algorithms. (Microsoft’s Imagine Cup 2007) and 1st place in numerous algorithm and software competitions in Asia.

I am interested in GPGPU, Global Illumination and Real time rendering techniques; algorithms and numerical methods, and scientific and financial computing.

Education

Stanford University, Stanford, CA	Winter 2011
M.S. in Computer Science Specialization in Computer Graphics Starting in Fall 2010
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA	May 2009 (Completed in 2 years)
B.S. in Computer Science, Minor in Economics GPA – 3.86 / 4.0
Raffles Junior College, Singapore	Dec 2004
Cambridge GCE Advanced Level GPA  4.0 / 4.0 + 2 Special Paper Distinctions

Leadership & Experience

Detailed description of Projects

Square Enix Co. Ltd., Tokyo, Japan	September 2009 - Present
Researcher., Research and Development Division Working on novel techniques for Global Illumination and Real time rendering on a variety of platforms. Photorealistic rendering in real time has been my focus. Made use of various stochastic and numerical techniques in implementing experimental versions of several global illumination techniques (eg. Instant Radiosity, Path Tracing, Photon Mapping variants) on massively parallel architecture. Exploring the use of domain specific languages to ease implementation of experimental versions of these global illumination techniques
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA	Spring 2009
Research Assistant, Foldit (http://fold-it) Game design and implementation for protein folding human computation game Contributed to renderer, game logic for protein creation component, and UI Implemented performance optimizations that gave a 250% fps improvement
Google Inc., Mountain View, CA	Summer 2008
Software Engineer Intern, O3D (http://code.google.com/apis/o3d/) Worked on a web API which brings scriptable high-end 3D graphics to the browser Proposed and implemented new component / class designs and API revisions Produced initial developer samples and automated testing suite
International Game Developers Association (IGDA)	2006 – 2007
President, Singapore Students Chapter Chaired the official branch of the IGDA for Singaporean students Organized and taught 3D programming lessons to college students
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA	Fall 2008
Teaching Assistant, 15-462 Computer Graphics Designed innovative GLSL and raytracing projects for students Gave lectures and acted as consultant on OpenGL, 3D math, and shaders
Operating Systems Eng., (Coursework - Pebbles Kernel)	Fall 2008
Designed and coded a fully preemptive, multi-threaded x86 kernel from scratch Also wrote custom console, keyboard, timer drivers and virtual memory allocator Ability to load and run user-written ELF executables

Honors

Microsoft Imagine Cup 2007 Worldwide Top 6 (Algorithms)

National Software Competition 2004 1st (Singapore)

National Olympiad for Informatics 2004 Gold (Singapore)

SEARCC International Software Competition 2001 International 4th

Dean’s List, Carnegie Mellon University Fall 2007, Spring 2008, Spring 2009

Defense Science and Technology Agency Undergraduate Scholarship

Skills

• Languages:
  • C++, C, Java, Assembly, C#, Javascript, SML, Basic, Pascal, PHP, Python
  
  
• 3D APIs / GPU Languages:
  • Direct3D, OpenGL, HLSL / CG / GLSL, CUDA, OpenCL
  
  
• Interests:
  • Computer Graphics, Algorithms (AI, Optimization, Data structures), Networks, Systems, Parallel Computation, GPGPU.