Yoland Gao

About Me

I'm passionate about building hardware systems, as well as the software that make them run efficiently.

Currently, I'm pursuing my Master's and Bachleor's in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (6-2) at MIT. I also work in the Mechatronics Research Laboratory as an Undergraduate Research Assistant.

Hardware-wise, I'm interested in digital systems (FPGA, VLSI), embedded systems, and nanofabrication.
Software-wise, I'm interested in full-stack development, systems engineering and data engineering.
My other interests include atmospheric sciences, public infrastructure, and digital humanities.

Hardware Projects

Currently, I am working on:

Fabricating nano-cantilevers (see picture) with microfluidic channels for AFM-based nano 3D-printing, as well as designing its control systems

My past projects include:

Designing a novel FPGA-based system for data capture from a novel terahertz radar array

Taping out a custom differential amplifier to the Intel16 FinFET process

Creating ADS-B processing modules in SystemVerilog to process aircraft surveillance data in real-time on Xilinx FPGA

Fabricating and testing silicon solar cells in MIT.nano

Characterizing the mechanical properties of IP-S, a common photo-polymer used for in 2-Photon Polymerization 3D printing.

Software Projects

For Iridium's Certus service, I developed data pipelines using Scala, Apache Spark, and Databricks.

3DSeaVizKit, a Python, TypeScript and WebGL-based 3D visualization suite for ocean model data. It is published in this paper.

MIT WxChallenge website, a D3.js-based visualization tool for weather forecasting data.

Decaf Optimizing Compiler, an x86 Optimizing Compiler for a C-like imperative language.

Other Things

Interactive visualizations for energy insecurity
I participate in the WxChallenge, an intercollegiate weather forecasting competition