Faith Luo (she/her)

Personal Statement

Researcher and engineer from Columbia University with extensive experience in both research and industry. 5+ years of experience working in teams. Research in cryptography, VR/HCI, human-data interaction.

Current research interests: type systems, computer graphics, physics simulation, parallel computing, accessibility

Education

GPA: 3.9/4.0. Egleston Scholar (funded research scholarship, ~10/year);
Core Scholar Award; Columbia Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honors; Dean's List

Courses (PhD-level): COMS 6998 Readings in Language Design (Bjarne Stroustrop), COMS 6998 Foundations of Blockchains (Tim Roughgarden), COMS 4995 C++ Language Design (Stroustrop), COMS4118 Operating Systems, COMS4610 Computer Graphics, COMS4115 Programming Languages, CSOR4231 Analysis of Algorithms, COMS4705 Natural Language Processing, COMS4261 Cryptography, COMS4236 Computational Complexity, MATH4061 Real Analysis I, MATH4041/2 Modern Algebra I/II

Publications

[2022] Thomas Chen, Hui Lu, Teeramet Kunpittaya, Faith (Alan) Luo. A review of zk-snarks. arXiv preprint arXiv: 2202.06877. 68 citations. [Google scholar link]

Work Experience

Engineer at a record-breaking and historical game studio. Gameplay systems for Sky: Children of the Light (光遇). Project Champion (Lead) on RealQuest strike. Live services, systems engineering, animation, particle systems, memory management, networking, microservices, etc.

Experimental decentralized real-time platform with 24k+ followers on Twitter (@darkforest_eth). Covered by MIT Technology Review. Scaling for thousands of concurrent players, Typescript, React, WebGL, graphics optimization, etc.

Static and dynamic analysis, financial tooling infra.

Editor Experience. Plugins, extensibility, Typescript, React, WebGL, C++.

WebGL, UI/UX, Javascript, map integration. Design and engineering.

Research Experience

Learning models for meshing and computer graphics. Advised by Prof. Jiayin Lu and Ying Jiang.

Zero-knowledge proofs and blockchains. Advised by Prof. Tim Roughgarden. 68 citations on arXiv preprint.

Experimental applied cryptography, open-source development, developer communities.

XR-based HCI research for dentistry. Advised by Prof. Stephen Feiner

Feature engineering, human-data interaction. Advised by Prof. Remco Chang

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 pinyin and furigana generation in the browser. [github]

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

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

Organization and Talks

[2022] Columbia Blockchain Reading Group, presenter, host, and organizer (advised by Prof. Tim Roughgarden)

[2020] zkSNARKs for Hidden Information Blockchain Games, presenter (zkSummit 6)

[2020] Dark Forest: Challenges and Constraints in ZK Gaming, presenter (EthGlobal)

[2020] Applied cryptography for games, presenter/panelist (Stanford Blockchain Conference)

Teaching and Outreach

High School Mentor: Summer Camp for Applied Rationality (SPARC), a STEM program for high schoolers, 2021, 2022.

Teaching Assistant: Programming for Social Impact (Columbia): Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2022

Awards

[2019] Columbia Egleston Scholar; [2023] Columbia Core Scholar; [2021-2022] Interact Fellow; [2020] Neo Scholar

Skills

Programming Languages: C++, Typescript/Javascript, React, Python, C, Java, LaTeX, Linux shell, Mathematica

Spoken Languages: English (native), Chinese (fluent), Japanese (conversational)