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
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Casual violinist, retired varsity track & field athlete, retired varsity debater​