Ken Kao

<h3>Droids in Space </h3> My team worked with <a href="http://www.nasa.gov" target="_blank">NASA</a> to investigate and implement a visual matching algorithm for estimation of relative motion of the camera. This is an importent step to implementing visual robot navigation system for NASA robots in space stations. For more information, check out our <a href="images/projects/CS194_Poster_Final.pdf" target="_blank">poster</a> (shown on the top) and <a href="https://github.com/kennyk616/CS194-Android-Space-Navigation" target="_blank">source code</a> on github!

<h3>Kinect Gesture Controller </h3> My team implemented two selection gestures with the Microsoft Kinect. Our application area of interest was the party dance floor, and we created two gestures for both the dancers and the DJ. Our project was voted #1 in class at <a href="http://cs247.stanford.edu" target="_blank">CS247: Human-Computer Interaction Studio</a>! Check out our <a href="http://www.stanford.edu/~kennykao/cgi-bin/cs247p3-website/" target="_blank">project website</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded%26v=JrvZFau-3cE" target="_blank">presentation video</a>, and <a href="https://github.com/ardakara/Kinect-Gesture-Controller" target="_blank">source code</a>!

<h3>Nom </h3> Nom is a mobile web application prototype that promotes healthy eating on Stanford campus. Unfortunately the university dining services does not have a good web api to automate the menu imports, so the website currently has no menu on it. For more information, please check out our <a href="http://eat.heroku.com" target="_blank"> website</a>, <a href="https://github.com/ardakara/nom_rails" target="_blank">source code</a>, and <a href="images/projects/Nom_Poster.pdf" target="_blank">poster</a>.

<h3>Music Genre Classification </h3> My team investigated various <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_learning" target="_blank"> machine learning</a> algorithms, including k-nearest neighbor (k-NN), k-means, multi-class SVM, and neural networks to classify the following four genres: classical, jazz, metal, and pop. We implemented the algorithms in Matlab, and achieved a 90%+ success rate with some of the algorithms. For more information, check out our <a href="images/projects/HaggbladeHongKao-MusicGenreClassification.pdf" target="_blank">paper</a>, <a href="images/projects/poster_cs229.pdf" target="_blank">poster</a>, and <a href="https://github.com/kennyk616/CS229-Music-Classification" target="_blank">source code</a>!

<h3>Palantir Technologies</h3> I worked on 3 projects as a <a href="http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-day-to-day-of-a-Forward-Deployed-Engineer-at-Palantir" target="_blank"> forward deployed engineer</a> at <a href="http://www.palantir.com" target="_blank">Palantir</a>. The first was on a specific deployment with a $150 billion asset manage firm who also publishes global equity indices. I integrated their data with the <a href="http://www.palantir.com/platforms/#metropolis" target="_blank">Palantir Metropolis</a> platform and built customized features for them. </br> </br> My second project was to design a demo with Palantir Metropolis for the home mortgages sector. I populated fake data, designed the demo, and presented to our external advisors in this space. </br> </br> For my last project, I coordinated 4 interns and 5 full-timers to create a visual web tool that empowered non-technical people to integrate client data with our platform. Once this is done, forward deployed engineers will have more time to work on more technically challenging problems.

<h3>Opower</h3> I worked on 2 projects at <a href="http://www.opower.com" target="_blank">Opower</a> in the summer of 2011. The first involved creating dynamically-generated FAQ sites for Opower's utility clients so that our front-end engineer didn't have to spend a few hours to copy and paste all the site content. My solution allowed a non-technical person to hit some buttons, fill out some forms for the content, and immediately create a website. You can see two of the examples <a href="https://dteenergy.opower.com/" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="https://otp.opower.com/" target="_blank">here</a>. </br> </br> Besides the FAQ sites, I also participated in the bi-annual "Innovation Day", working on a project that involved short-url for users to sign up for our platform. I subsequently acted as the PM and engineer of the project, bringing in together 8 people from various functions to collaborate. The feature is currently in Opower's roadmap, and is scheduled to go live in late 2012.

<h3>Facebook</h3> At <a href="http://www.facebook.com" target="_blank">Facebook</a>, I worked as a hardware engineering intern on the server team's first energy-efficient server design in 2010. My day often consists of my manager dumping 10 servers for me in the morning and asking me to diagnose what went wrong in each of them (and fix them if I can). I also worked on testing memory, CPU energy usage, and various hardware components on the motherboard. This project eventually became the <a href="http://opencompute.org/" target="_blank">Open Compute Project</a>, with Facebook releasing the <a href="http://opencompute.org/specs/" target="_blank">specs and designs</a> of the server and datacenters. The new system reduced the power consumption by 38% and costs 24% less than the previous models.

<h3>Hewlett-Packard</h3> I joined the Workstation Global Business Unit's Taiwan Design Center (TDC) at <a href="http://www.hp.com" target="_blank">Hewlett-Packard</a> as a Research & Development intern in 2009. I worked on TDC's first project, the <a href="http://www.hp.com/sbso/busproducts-workstations.html" target="_blank">Workstation</a> Z200, and designed the <a href="http://www.energystar.gov/" target="_blank">Energy Star</a> 5.0 test plan - an international standard for energy efficient consumer products. I also identified and diagnosed an idle-state power-savings malfunction, which resulted a 10-Watt (20%) saving for each computer. We eventually obtained the Energy Star 5.0 certification (although I dare not take the credit since I wasn't the one designing the actual computer components!).