KARLY HOU
I'm interested in education, global health, sustainability, healthy cities, & good AI.
Social Impact
Wave Learning Festival
Founder & Executive Director, April 2020 - Present
A 501(c)3 nonprofit started to combat long-standing educational inequities exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. 51% of US public school students are low-income. We've built a free, live, online learning platform Created and run an online education platform serving 14k+ students from all 50 states and 62 countries. To date, we've provided 400+ free, live seminars on diverse topics, 2000+ hours of free tutoring, free college application help and career support, and cool speaker events. We've partnered with 600+ schools, libraries, and community organizations serving low-income and homeless youth to ensure our resources reach those most in need.
WECode Conference
Director of Programming, September 2019 - Present
The largest student-run women in tech conference in the world, attracting 1100+ participants from 30+ countries each year. We run a fall conference for high schoolers and spring conference for college students, featuring keynotes by incredible women, tech talks, workshops, networking, and more.
Academic & Work Experience
Harvard University
Undergraduate Researcher
Computational neuroscience research in Professor Venkatesh Murthy's olfaction lab.
Feb 2021 - present | Cambridge, MA
Universidad Mayor
Research Intern
Dec 2020 - Jan 2020 | Chile
Trabajo con el Centro de Economía y Políticas Sociales para investigar diferencias de género en la movilidad intergenerational en educación y riqueza y en la igualdad de oportunidades en Chile, Colombia, y México.
Two Sigma
Software Engineer Intern
May 2020 - Jul 2020 | Houston, TX
Created a self-updating caches framework, REST API, & dashboard UI for developers to propagate large volumes of data throughout systems instantly, using Java, Kafka, React, Swagger, etc. Integrated with existing tools. Full-stack project.
NVIDIA
Embedded Software Intern
Jun 2018 - Aug 2018 | Santa Clara, CA
Developed the GreenMachine, a system that allows users to place a tray of lunch waste and immediately see items sorted into compost, recycling, trash, and reusable items in real-time AR. Trained a multi-class network, EnviroNet, from SSD MobileNet V1 on an NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPU using the cuDNN-accelerated TensorFlow deep learning framework.
Stony Brook University
Research Scholar
Jul 2017 - Aug 2017 | Stony Brook, NY
Designed own research project, developed mathematical, C++ molecular dynamics simulations modeling light transport behavior and polymer interaction in ternary blend organic solar cells. Polymer solar cells are ultra-thin, ultra-light, translucent, and mass-producible, with potential future applications to self-charging devices and self-powered green cities. Awarded Siemens Semifinalist.
AI4ALL
Scholar
Jun 2016 | Stanford, CA
1 of 24 participants selected globally to attend; all expenses paid. Learned about AI techniques and applications; worked on programming self-driving cars using vision processing and path algorithms.
Other Activities
Affiliations: New World Social Innovation Fellowship, Harvard Innovation Lab, Harvard Women in CS, Harvard Consulting, Harvard Financial Analysts Club, HAUSCR Summit for Young Leaders in China, Studio Art Society
Casual violinist, retired varsity track & field athlete, retired varsity debater