Resume

General Information

Name Yuheng (Aaron) Ding
Email yhding@ucla.edu
Phone 706-238-1952
GitHub https://github.com/AaXDing
LinkedIn https://linkedin.com/in/yuheng-ding
Summary Undergraduate at UCLA (CS & Applied Math, GPA 3.88) with experience in software engineering and AI research, joining CMU's MIIS program to deepen expertise in intelligent information systems.

Education

  • 2025.8 - 2026.12
    Master of Science in Intelligent Information Systems
    Carnegie Mellon University
    • Focus: Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing
  • 2021.9 - 2025.6
    Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics
    University of California, Los Angeles
    • GPA: 3.88/4.0
    • Relevant Coursework: Algorithms and Complexity, Computer Networks, Machine Learning, Database Systems, Data Structures, Computer Organization, Deep Learning, Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing, Graph Theory, Linear Algebra

Work Experience

  • 2023.7 - 2023.10
    Full-Stack Software Engineer Intern
    • Collaborated with a team of 4 engineers to architect a full-stack e-commerce platform, with a focus on promoting a healthy lifestyle and fostering environmental sustainability
    • Engineered a product page UI template using Python Django framework for backend and MongoDB for data persistence; streamlined automatic page creation from database; enhanced scalability and amplified product creation efficiency by 400% over manual page inputting
    • Improved user information gathering, payment workflow with Stripe API, and email order confirmations; achieved a 30% reduction in checkout process response time
    • Collaborated with a colleague to enhance online consulting session reservation system, integrating voice and video chat functionalities by using WebSocket and WebRTC technologies, resulting in 60% decrease in reservation confirmation time

Research Experience

  • 2024.6 - 2025.3
    Undergraduate Researcher
    UCLA NLP, UCLA PLUS Lab (Advisor: Prof. Kai-Wei Chang, Prof. Nanyun Peng)
    • Developed a comprehensive benchmark for evaluating visual language models (VLMs) on perception and reasoning quality in QA tasks
    • Developed an intuitive annotation tool that improved the annotator experience, enabling efficient curation of over 1,600 fine-grained annotated samples
    • Tested on over 25 VLMs to assess self-critique and correction abilities
    • Introduced a novel evaluation metric, namely VISCore, which incorporated answer accuracy, step-wise critique accuracy, and critique quality
    • Improved critique accuracy by 8% through agent-based critique generation
  • 2023.7 - 2023.9
    Research Intern
    UCLA ARNI Lab (Advisor: Prof. Christina Fragouli)
    • Refined a graph theory solution to minimize tests and time used in identifying infection within a community network using Python
    • Developed data pre-generation script using Python, resulting in a 70% reduction in test time for a population size of 20k
    • Improved testing script with Jupyter and JSON that enabled test creation and logging with 20% overhead reduction
    • Originated a community-aware diagonal splitting algorithm using a divide-and-conquer strategy which factored in community structure; the new algorithm needed 10% less tests compared to 5 other commonly-used algorithms

Publications

  • 2025.02
    VISCO: Benchmarking Fine-Grained Critique and Correction Towards Self-Improvement in Visual Reasoning

Projects

  • 2023.10 - 2024.01
    Job Search Platform
    • Constructed a job search platform that personalized job recommendations merely based on user views and likes
    • Incorporated Search, Favorite, and Recommendation functionalities in Java Servlets with REST APIs
    • Implemented frontend UI components using JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and Ajax
    • Designed AI-based keyword extraction algorithms and history-based recommendation engine
    • Configured and deployed on AWS EC2 virtual machine, combining Redis and Amazon RDS; scaled to 10k QPS and reduced latency by 90%
  • 2024.02 - 2024.03
    DiffEdit: Text-Guided Image Editing with Diffusion
    • Image editing via DiffEdit + BLIP with Stable Diffusion
    • Reduced prompt restrictions and improved creation efficiency
  • 2024.01 - 2024.03
    LLM Evaluation
    • Led a team of 4 in researching prompting techniques, enhancing the factual accuracy and fairness assessment of LLMs
    • Developed a zero-shot evaluation framework using Microsoft Phi-2 and Mistral-7B, incorporating GPT-generated evidence and chain-of-thought reasoning
    • Achieved a 76% accuracy rate in assessment tasks
  • 2022.10 - 2022.12
    Bruin-O-Bruin Web App
    • Coordinated with a team of 5 to build a full-stack elimination web game using Node.js, React framework, and SQLite
    • Led implementation of core features including game randomization, discussion forum, and scoreboard
    • Launched account management features with password protection and reset functionality
    • Deployed on Azure VM and achieved over 50% class participation rate

Skills

Programming Languages & Frameworks Java, Spring Boot, Tomcat, Python, Django, PyTorch, NumPy, C++, JavaScript, React, SQL, Bash, HTML, CSS
Databases & Data MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, MongoDB, Redis, Spark
DevOps & Cloud AWS, Azure, Docker, Kubernetes, Linux, Git

Languages

English Professional
Mandarin Native
Spanish Intermediate