David Hua

About Me

I am a computer science student from UBC looking for coop opportunities. My academic interests include HCI, NLP and cloud development. I am passionate about developing innovative solutions and learning new technologies.

Education

University of British Columbia, Vancouver

From August 2024 - Present

Program: B.Sc. in Computer Science

GPA: 4.33/4.33 (91.5/100)

Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen

From June 2023 - August 2024

Program: B.Eng. in Computer Engineering

GPA: 3.7/4.0

Experience

Undergraduate Teaching Assistant, UBC

From Jan 2026 – April 2026

Guided students through foundational computer science concepts and hands-on programming practice to strengthen coding proficiency and conceptual understanding.

• Led weekly lab sessions for CPSC 110 (Computation, Programs, and Programming) with two other TAs, guiding 30+ students through programming exercises and conceptual challenges.
• Conducted interactive grading sessions, evaluating student assignments in person by discussing their code, problem-solving approach, and understanding of core computing concepts.
• Provided individualized feedback and clarified abstract topics such as recursion to reinforce learning.
• Hosted office hours and actively supported students on Piazza, answering technical and conceptual questions to ensure timely learning support.
• Collaborated with instructors and TAs to align grading criteria and maintain consistent assessment standards across lab sections.

Quality Assurance Intern, GHz-Tech

From May 2025 – July 2025

Improved software reliability and user experience through rigorous QA testing and cross-team collaboration.

• Conducted comprehensive UI functionality and regression testing for a hospital information system (HIS) mobile app, ensuring stability before internal release.
• Wrote and maintained 100+ structured test cases based on UX prototypes and design documentation, with emphasis on ambiguity resolution and boundary behavior; identified 21 functional bugs and 4 usability issues, including 4 bugs not previously discovered by the primary QA lead.
• Collaborated with the QA engineer to cross-verify defects and coordinate issue triage and resolution with frontend/backend developers via internal tracking platform, accelerating fix verification and sprint cycles.
• Prioritized reported issues by risk level and impact on user workflow, enabling faster response cycles during development sprints.
• Delivered detailed bug reports with annotated screenshots and reproduction steps, improving communication between QA and engineering.
• Iterated on UI layouts and flows in Figma based on client feedback, contributing to smoother user interactions and visual consistency.

Undergraduate Research Assistant, CUHK(SZ)

From August 2023 - July 2024

Built automation tools and applied LLMs to streamline ESG data collection and improve research reliability.

• Developed a Python-based web crawler to automatically collect ESG reports from corporate websites, improving data acquisition efficiency.
• Automated PDF-to-text conversion and preprocessing pipelines, increasing data accuracy and reliability for subsequent NLP analysis.
• Utilized large language models (LLMs) to extract key ESG metrics, reducing manual data processing workload and improving extraction consistency.
• Designed optimized prompts for LLM data extraction, cutting hallucination rates by 4% and boosting research validity.

Finance Officer, CUHK(SZ) IEEE Student Branch

Led financial operations and initiatives that strengthened student engagement and organizational accountability.

From August 2023 - July 2024

• Established financial oversight system for a 200+ member IEEE branch, managing reimbursements, student funding requests, and compliance with university policies.
• Initiated and managed a reimbursement project for IEEE membership fees, funded by the School of Science and Engineering, to boost student membership in the global IEEE community.

Projects

UBC Course Visual Planner

This project provided a course visualizing and planning tool to plan my future course and help other students in UBC. View the project on GitHub

Identifier System to Enhance ASCII Art Recognition in LLMs

• Designed a lightweight content-moderation tool integrating LLM and VLM models to detect offensive ASCII art.
• Improved recognition accuracy from 12% → 81% and reduced hallucination from 88% → 14% through image-based rerouting.
• Implemented reproducible experiments and statistical validation (t-test, bootstrap) in Python.

UBC MineCraft Player Engagement Analysis

This project analyzes player behavior on a UBC-hosted Minecraft server using player and session data. The goal is to identify which types of players contribute the most data, aiding targeted recruitment for future research. View the project on GitHub

ESG Report Information Extraction

A private project where I work with two other people to use OpenAI's API to extract valuable insights from ESG reports and analyze the data we get.

Due to the nature of the project, this cannot be shared publicly.

Skills

Technical Skills:

• Programming Languages: Python (Pandas, Scikit-learn, TensorFlow, PyTorch, NumPy), Java (JavaFX), C, C++, JavaScript/TypeScript, SQL, R
• Databases & Data Management: SQL (DDL/DML, joins, aggregation), Relational Database Design, Normalization, ER Modeling, ETL Pipelines, Data Cleaning
• Testing: Test case design, Regression Testing, Bug Tracking, Defect Triage, Testing & QA Documentation
• UI/UX Design: Prototyping (Figma), Interview/Observation/Survey Design, Thematic Analysis, Usability Testing, Heuristic Evaluation, UI mockup adaptation, Client-driven Iteration
• Machine Learning & AI: Classical ML models (KNN, Ridge, Random Forest, ensemble methods, etc), Recommand System, Time Series, Model Evaluation & Deployment
• Web Development: RESTful services, Node.js, Express, React, HTML, CSS, JavaScript/TypeScript
• Software Engineering: Docker, Git, GitHub, UML-based Architecture Design, Basic Linux Environments, CI/CD Pipelines

Note on course status: SQL fundamentals currently being strengthened through coursework.

Languages:

• English (Advanced)
• Manderin (Proficient/Native)
• Shanghainese (Advanced)
• French (Beginner)

Honours

• Faculty of Science International Student Scholarship (2025)
• UBC Dean's Scholar (2025)

Hobbies

1. Sports

• Cycling
• Badminton
• Frisbee

2. Reading

I love reading all kinds of books: Mystery Novels, Science Fictions, Historical Novels, Fantasy, Textbooks, etc.

Here are a few books I like:

• All Creatures Great and Small(by James Herriot)
• The Hobbit(by J. R. R. Tolkien)
• Alfred Hitchcock's Novels
• One Hundred Years of Solitude(by Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez)
• The Selfish Gene(by Richard Dawkins)
• Cthulhu Mythos(by Howard Phillips Lovecraft)
• David Copperfield(by Charles Dickens)
• The Mysterious Island(by Jules Gabriel Verne)
• Structure and interpretation of computer programs(by MIT)

3. Writing

Outside of work, I write science fiction and mystery stories, as well as essays on philosophical topics, particularly ethics and rationality.

• Individual Utilitarianism: A Rationalist Model of Self-Oriented Moral Cognition

4. Online Courses

I enjoy online courses and often spend my spare time watching them. And I really respect and am grateful to the institutions that offer these high-quality courses.

Here are a few high-quality courses I found interested [The numbers in square brackets represent the year I completed the course once]:

• Yale PHIL 176: Death [2022]
• MIT 18.01: Single Variable Calculus [2023]
• MIT 18.02: Multivariable Calculus [2023]
• 3B1B(Youtube): Essence of calculus [2023]: The idea of visualizing Math it great. This is something you can watch it anytime and have fun.
• MIT 18.06: Linear Algebra [2023]: On May 15, 2023, Gilbert Strang taught his last class in 18.06, concluding his 61-year teaching and research career at MIT at the age of 88. However, his linear algebra courses have already and will continue to influence generations of young students. I would like to pay the highest respect to this esteemed gentleman.
• 3B1B(Youtube): Essence of linear algebra [2023]
• MIT 6.001: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs [2024]
• MIT 6.042J: Mathematics for Computer Science [2024]
• MIT 14.01: Principles of Microeconomics [2024]
• UCLA PSYCH 135: Social Psychology [2024]
• CMU 05-863/08-763/45-888*: Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction for Technology Executives [2025]
• CMU 05-440/05-640: Interaction Techniques (IxT) [2025]
• CMU 15-213: Introduction to Computer Systems (ICS) (CSAPP) [2025]
• Harvard CS50: Introduction to AI with Python [2025]
• UCB CS188: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence [2025]
• Coursera: Supervised Machine Learning: Regression and Classification [2025]
• UW-Madison CS571: Building User Interfaces [2026]
• CMU 15-445/645: Database Systems [2026]

5. Movies

• The Truman Show: I love Jim Carrey's movies so much.
• The Shawshank Redemption
• Lalaland
• The Big Bang Theory
• The Greatest Showman: The movie itself isn't that great, but I like the singing part.

6. Musicals

• Hamilton
• Les Misérables
• 1789 : Les Amants de la Bastille