Faith Luo

I am an engineer and computer scientist currently working on gameplay systems at thatgamecompany. I studied Computer Science as an Egleston Scholar at Columbia University (BSE).

Previously: Research-wise, I worked on cryptography with Tim Roughgarden (Columbia), VR/HCI at CGUI (Columbia), human-data interaction at VALT (Tufts), and adiabatic quantum computing at QxBranch.

Engineering-wise, I worked on Python Infra at D.E. Shaw, editor experience at Figma, applied cryptography at Ethereum Foundation, and WebGL dev at Countable Web Productions. I also co-founded Dark Forest (MIT Tech Review).

These days, I am generally interested in: programming languages, graphics and simulation, HCI and accessibility.

github / email / linkedin / scholar / cv (as pdf)

Publications

[2022] A review of zk-snarks. Thomas Chen, Hui Lu, Teeramet Kunpittaya, Faith (Alan) Luo. 68 citations

[scholar]

Projects

[2024] UnitLib - A highly-optimized C++ matrix and vector library supporting arbitrary SI units and beyond. Comparable to or faster than glfw, the industry-standard matrix library, in a fraction of the lines of code.

[github]

[2025] xml-peruse - A typed and memory-optimized XML parser for typescript/javascript.

[github]

[2025] charizardb - Japanese-Chinese cross-linguistic (k|h)an(j|z)i mapping.

[github]

[2025] 日本語/中文 Anki Decks - Interactive study resources for trilingual language curios.

[github]

[2025] follyanna - Simple 拼pīn音yīn and 振ふり仮名がな generation in the browser.

[github]

[2023] Sappho in Space - An interactive ASCII art game implemented entirely in the browser.

[github] [web game]

[2021] Dark Forest - Massively successful open-source decentralized game project. The first fully-decentralized real-time game. 25k followers and 200+ github stars.

[github] [twitter] [MIT press]

[2017] Little Planet Procedural - Procedural alien landscapes generated in the browser. 100+ stars on Github.

[github] [web demo]

Interests

Things that are currently on my mind and I would like to work on soon:

Unified type systems across multi-language stacks for (e.g. scripting, engine, shader)
Parallel physics simulation in constrained environments (i.e. smartphones or embedded systems)
Technology for accessibility, e.g. transcribing sign language

I am generally interested in technology that is oriented towards humans. I've studied diversely across programming languages, cryptography, HCI, and other fields, but I am always looking for a slant that impacts a wider audience, especially underserved groups or niche interests.

For instance:

Augmenting C++ with a unit system to aid developers in catching obscure dimensional mismatch errors (UnitLib)
Developing better tools to parse open-source dictionaries (xml-peruse); extracting dictionary data to develop better tools for language-learners (charizardb)
Using cutting-edge cryptography to develop an interactive social space and drive open-source community (Dark Forest)

If you'd like to work on something together please feel free to reach out.