About
My name is Austen Hsiao. I currently live in Happy Valley, OR and I am a graduate student studying computer science at Portland State University. I love computer science and I love chemistry. I spend much of my free time coding and reading web articles. On my less productive days, you'll find me watching 'Seinfeld' and/or trying out a new recipes. For examples of some of the projects I've worked on, please see my GitHub repo.
Background
I've always had a love for math and science. Math allows us to model the world around us while science provides the reasoning behind it. In 2016, I graduated with a B.S. chemistry from Oregon State university and began working for Intel. I worked as a manufacturing technician, stationed inside the cleanroom fab. Our team was tasked with collecting data. In practice, I ran test wafers on etchers to gauge product quality. At some point, I wanted to be a bigger part of the process-- to take on more responsibilities, but I was capped with only a bachelors. I decided to go back to school. This was not an easy decision for me to make, as I loved the company and especially my coworkers, but I had to prioritize my long-term goals. In 2017, I started graduate school at OSU for inorganic chemistry.
One of many
The first, designed to teach Python as a way to accelerate the research process, really drew me towards coding. I used my newfound knowledge to create an application in C++ that would streamline finding new
compositions. The user would define a set of parameters for a given atom (size and charge) and the calculator would return a list of elements that should substitute. The second course focused on using MatLab to simulate
material properties including heat transfer and diffusion. At this point, I was shocked at the sheer power of computing. Computers bridged the gap between math and science-- we could model the world and examine every moving part.
The world of software seems endless.This prompted me to start reading coding material and tutorials.
My inorganic chemistry background goes hand-in-hand with computer science. The kind of solid state systems we study at OSU give way to applications largely seen in computers. For example, semiconductors of n- and p- type create the necessary pre-cursors for MOSFETs-- the basis of modern computing. Understanding the nature of electronic materials allows developers to engineer successful designs by leveraging hardware. Afterall, the field of computer science is much more than code.
This brings us to the present day where I have graduated from PSU with my MS in computer science. I still have a long way to go but I absolutely love the field and I strive to improve every day.