{"basics":{"name":"Sirui Tao","label":"Researcher, Engineer, and Designer","image":"","email":"s1tao@ucsd.edu","url":"https://dylantao.github.io/","summary":"I am a Cognitive Science Ph.D. student at UC San Diego studying HCI, design, and human-centered AI. My work asks how interfaces can help people compare options, reason through tradeoffs, and decide what is worth making.","location":{"address":"9510 Innovation Ln","postalCode":"CA 92093","city":"La Jolla","countryCode":"US","region":"California"},"profiles":[{"network":"LinkedIn","username":"siruitao","url":"https://www.linkedin.com/in/siruitao"},{"network":"GitHub","username":"DylanTao","url":"https://github.com/DylanTao"},{"network":"Twitter","username":"siruitao","url":"https://x.com/siruitao"}]},"education":[{"institution":"University of California San Diego","area":"Cognitive Science","studyType":"Doctor of Philosophy","location":"La Jolla, CA, USA","startDate":"2025-08","endDate":"2030-06","courses":"Research in Human-computer-interaction & Design","advisors":[{"name":"Steven P. Dow","url":"https://spdow.ucsd.edu/"}],"url":"https://cogsci.ucsd.edu/graduates/phd-program/index.html"},{"institution":"University of California San Diego","area":"Computer Science and Engineering","studyType":"Master of Science","location":"La Jolla, CA, USA","startDate":"2023-09","endDate":"2025-03","courses":"Research in Human-computer-interaction & Graphics","advisors":[{"name":"Steven P. Dow","url":"https://spdow.ucsd.edu/"},{"name":"Tzu-Mao Li","url":"https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~tzli/"}],"url":"https://cse.ucsd.edu/graduate/degree-programs/ms-program"},{"institution":"University of California San Diego","area":"Data Science & Probability and Statistics","studyType":"Bachelor of Science","location":"La Jolla, CA, USA","startDate":"2019-09","endDate":"2023-03","courses":"Research in Intuitive Physics","advisors":[{"name":"Judith E. Fan","url":"https://profiles.stanford.edu/judith-fan"}],"url":"https://warren.ucsd.edu/"}],"academia":[{"name":"UCSD, ProtoLab","position":"Graduate Student Researcher","location":"La Jolla, CA, USA","startDate":"2023-12","endDate":"Present","summary":"Investigating generative models for contextual multimodal documents to aid designers and support collaborative scenarios.","url":"https://protolab.ucsd.edu/"},{"name":"UCSD, Tzu-Mao Li's Lab","position":"Graduate Student Researcher","location":"La Jolla, CA, USA","startDate":"2023-08","endDate":"2025-04","summary":"Combining neural methods and traditional graphics pipelines to enable flexible and fast-forward physical interaction prediction; studying inverse physical prediction using diffusion-based models.","url":"https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~tzli/"},{"name":"UCSD, HDSI","position":"Undergraduate Researcher","location":"La Jolla, CA, USA","startDate":"2022-11","endDate":"2023-05","summary":"Developed GraphHSCN, a novel graph neural network architecture for long-range interaction modeling.","url":"http://yusu.belkin-wang.org"},{"name":"UCSD, CogTools Lab","position":"Undergraduate Researcher","location":"La Jolla, CA, USA","startDate":"2021-01","endDate":"2022-06","summary":"Contributed to Physion and Physion++, focusing on data analysis and designing 3D stimuli for non-rigid physical interactions.","url":"https://cogtoolslab.github.io/"}],"teaching":[{"name":"UCSD","position":"Teaching Assistant - COGS 125: Advanced Interaction Design","location":"La Jolla, CA, USA","startDate":"2026-03","endDate":"2026-06","summary":"TA for Prof. Scott Klemmer","url":"https://catalog.ucsd.edu/courses/COGS.html"},{"name":"UCSD","position":"Teaching Assistant - DSGN 1: Design of Everyday Things","location":"La Jolla, CA, USA","startDate":"2026-01","endDate":"2026-03","summary":"TA for Prof. Michael Meyer","url":"https://catalog.ucsd.edu/courses/DSGN.html"},{"name":"UCSD","position":"Teaching Assistant - COGS 187A: Usability & Information Architecture","location":"La Jolla, CA, USA","startDate":"2025-08","endDate":"2025-09","summary":"TA for Prof. Mary ET Boyle","url":"https://catalog.ucsd.edu/courses/COGS.html"},{"name":"UCSD","position":"Teaching Assistant - COGS 186: Genetic Algorithms","location":"La Jolla, CA, USA","startDate":"2025-08","endDate":"2025-09","summary":"TA for Prof. Anjum Gupta","url":"https://catalog.ucsd.edu/courses/COGS.html"},{"name":"UCSD","position":"Teaching Assistant - DSGN 1: Design of Everyday Things","location":"La Jolla, CA, USA","startDate":"2025-01","endDate":"2025-03","summary":"TA for Prof. Michael Meyer","url":"https://catalog.ucsd.edu/courses/DSGN.html"},{"name":"UCSD","position":"Teaching Assistant - DSGN 1: Design of Everyday Things","location":"La Jolla, CA, USA","startDate":"2024-09","endDate":"2024-12","summary":"TA for Prof. Michael Meyer","url":"https://catalog.ucsd.edu/courses/DSGN.html"},{"name":"UCSD","position":"Teaching Assistant - CSE 175: Entrepreneurship for Engineers","location":"La Jolla, CA, USA","startDate":"2024-06","endDate":"2024-09","summary":"TA for Prof. Rakesh Kumar","url":"https://catalog.ucsd.edu/courses/CSE.html"},{"name":"UCSD","position":"Teaching Assistant - DSGN 1: Design of Everyday Things","location":"La Jolla, CA, USA","startDate":"2024-03","endDate":"2024-06","summary":"TA for Prof. Scott Klemmer","url":"https://catalog.ucsd.edu/courses/DSGN.html"},{"name":"UCSD","position":"Teaching Assistant - COGS 9: Introduction to Data Science","location":"La Jolla, CA, USA","startDate":"2024-01","endDate":"2024-03","summary":"TA for Prof. Meenakshi Khosla","url":"https://catalog.ucsd.edu/courses/COGS.html"}],"work":[{"name":"Autodesk","position":"PhD Intern, AI Research - Datasets & Benchmarks","location":"Remote","startDate":"2026-06","endDate":"2026-09","summary":"Working on better human-centered evaluation for 3D CAD.","url":"https://www.autodesk.com/"},{"name":"MAVERiC Studio","position":"Garage Startup Intern","location":"La Jolla, CA, USA","startDate":"2024-01","endDate":"2024-04","summary":"Explored virtual world creation, metaverse audience engagement, and AI tools. Built 'Not A Good Driver'. <a href='https://vrchat.com/home/launch?worldId=wrld_ef581bd6-9d93-457e-b6a3-7d7f297f1cab' target='_blank'>Try it here</a>.","url":"https://dib.ucsd.edu/studios/maveric-studio/"},{"name":"SchedGo","position":"Data Engineer","location":"Remote","startDate":"2023-01","endDate":"2023-08","summary":"Built data infrastructure and conducted analytics; developed marketing data analytics to identify key user groups; designed a survey model for front-end user feedback.","url":"https://schedgo.com/"},{"name":"San Diego Supercomputer Center","position":"Deep Learning Engineer Intern","location":"La Jolla, CA, USA","startDate":"2022-11","endDate":"2023-08","summary":"Implemented scalable multi-GPU hyperparameter tuning using Ray Tune on HPC infrastructure. Investigated data-centric MLOps solutions to improve time and resource efficiency in experimentation.","url":"https://www.sdsc.edu/"},{"name":"Tesla","position":"Data Scientist Intern","location":"Fremont, California, USA","startDate":"2022-06","endDate":"2022-09","summary":"Developed lossless image compression solutions and advanced statistical process control tools.","url":"https://www.tesla.com/"},{"name":"Buhler Group","position":"Data Scientist Intern","location":"Wuxi, Jiangsu, China","startDate":"2021-07","endDate":"2021-09","summary":"Initiated MLOps image-labeling features for defect detection and prototyped cross-functional innovation tools.","url":"https://www.buhlergroup.com/"},{"name":"J.D. Power","position":"Analyst Intern","location":"Shanghai, China","startDate":"2021-06","endDate":"2021-07","summary":"Optimized workflow for quality analytics by automating data processing and report pipelines.","url":"https://www.jdpower.com/"},{"name":"Bosch","position":"Data Analyst Intern","location":"Wuxi, Jiangsu, China","startDate":"2020-08","endDate":"2020-11","summary":"Developed Tableau dashboards for manufacturing analytics; reduced bottleneck diagnosing time by 80%.","url":"https://www.bosch.com/"}],"volunteer":[{"organization":"Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute, UC San Diego","location":"La Jolla, CA, USA","position":"Data Science Student Representative","url":"https://datascience.ucsd.edu","startDate":"2021-09-01","endDate":"2022-06-01","summary":"Represented HDSI students to improve the data science program and curriculum.","highlights":["Peer-advised HDSI undergraduate students.","Evaluated and improved the data science curriculum.","Promoted the program to external audiences."]},{"organization":"Mentor Collective","location":"La Jolla, CA, USA","position":"Mentor at UCSD","url":"https://mentorcollective.org","startDate":"2021-09-01","endDate":"2022-02-01","summary":"Mentored first-year and transfer students at UCSD to help them adapt to university life.","highlights":["Provided guidance and support for new UCSD students.","Facilitated connections to campus resources and communities."]}],"awards":[{"title":"MSR AI and the New Future of Work CFP","date":"Jun 15, 2026","awarder":"Microsoft Research","url":"https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/academic-program/ai-and-the-new-future-of-work-cfp-spring-2026/","rejectionNote":"[Rejected Once, Accepted Zero Times ;)]","strikeTitle":true},{"title":"MSR Fellowship","date":"Feb 27, 2026","awarder":"Microsoft Research","url":"https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/academic-program/microsoft-research-fellowship/","rejectionNote":"[Rejected Once, Accepted Zero Times ;)]","strikeTitle":true},{"title":"YC AI Student Starter Pack","date":"2026","awarder":"Y Combinator","summary":"~$25,000 in free credits for AI tools and cloud services.","url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/the-yc-ai-student-starter-pack"},{"title":"SHORE Fellowship","date":"2025 - 2031","awarder":"UCSD, Cognitive Science Department","summary":"~$70,000 in value; 3 recipients in the Cognitive Science Department annually.","url":"https://cogsci.ucsd.edu/"},{"title":"OpenAI Researcher Access Program","date":"2025","awarder":"OpenAI","summary":"~$1,000 in credits.","url":"https://openai.com/"},{"title":"IGE Shah Fellowship","date":"2023 - 2024","awarder":"UCSD, Institute for the Global Entrepreneur","summary":"Awarded the Shah Family Entrepreneur Fellowship ($5,000) as one of two Shah Fellows university-wide for outstanding research contributions and entrepreneurial potential. The fellowship, launched by the Institute for the Global Entrepreneur (IGE)—a collaboration between the Jacobs School of Engineering and the Rady School of Management—aims to teach engineers to become entrepreneurs and leaders.","url":"https://ige.ucsd.edu/programs/certificate"},{"title":"The Cornell, Maryland, Max Planck Pre-doctoral Research School Fellowship","date":"2023","awarder":"Cornell, Maryland, Max Planck Institute","summary":"$3,000; ~60 global recipients annually.","url":"https://cmmrs.mpi-sws.org/"},{"title":"HDSI Research Scholarship","date":"2021, 2022","awarder":"UCSD, Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute","summary":"$2,500 x 2; ~30 recipients at HDSI annually.","url":"https://datascience.ucsd.edu/current-students/undergraduate-financial-opportunities/","rejectionNote":"[Rejected Once, Accepted Twice]"},{"title":"TRELS Research Scholarship","date":"2020 Spring, 2022 Winter","awarder":"AEP, UCSD","summary":"$1,000 x 2; ~75 recipients at UCSD quarterly.","url":"https://ugresearch.ucsd.edu/programs/all-urh-programs/trels/","rejectionNote":"[Rejected Twice, Accepted Twice]"},{"title":"Provost Honor","date":"2019 - 2023","awarder":"Warren College, UCSD","summary":"$0, but it sounds cool; ~20% of students at Warren College annually.","url":"https://warren.ucsd.edu/"}],"certificates":[],"publications":[{"name":"XXX: abcdefg","publisher":"Resubmitting to CHI27","releaseDate":"2026","summary":"Sirui Tao and Steven P. Dow.","rejectionNote":"[Rejected at CHI26 & UIST 2026] :-<","strikeTitle":true,"paperLabel":"P5","anchor":"cv-publication-p5"},{"name":"What Happened and Why? Trace-Guided Micro-Episodes with Elicited User Explanations for Product Iteration","publisher":"Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2026 (Position paper for \"Herding CATs: Making Sense of Creative Activity Traces\" workshop)","releaseDate":"2026","url":"https://dylantao.github.io/projects/what-happened-and-why/","summary":"Sirui Tao, William P. McCarthy, Steven P. Dow.","paperLabel":"W1","anchor":"cv-publication-w1"},{"name":"DesignWeaver: Dimensional Scaffolding for Text-to-Image Product Design","publisher":"Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2025","releaseDate":"2025","url":"https://drive.google.com/file/d/1URD3apa7C9qS_ZXFAFCPpnwNfQzljI2M/view?usp=sharing","summary":"Sirui Tao, Ivan Liang, Cindy Peng, Zhiqing Wang, Srishti Palani, and Steven P. Dow.","paperLabel":"P4","anchor":"cv-publication-p4"},{"name":"HotSpot: Screened Poisson Equation for Signed Distance Function Optimization","publisher":"Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition 2025 (Highlight)","releaseDate":"2025","url":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2411.14628","summary":"Zimo Wang, Cheng Wang, Taiki Yoshino, Sirui Tao, Ziyang Fu, and Tzu-Mao Li.","paperLabel":"P3","anchor":"cv-publication-p3"},{"name":"Physion++: Evaluating Physical Scene Understanding with Objects Consisting of Different Physical Attributes in Humans and Machines","publisher":"Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society 2023 (Poster with abstract)","releaseDate":"2023","url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3x9960zn","summary":"Hsiao-Yu Tung, Mingyu Ding, Zhenfang Chen, Sirui Tao, Vedang Lad, Daniel Bear, Chuang Gan, Josh Tenenbaum, Daniel Yamins, Judith Fan, and Kevin Smith.","paperLabel":"P2","anchor":"cv-publication-p2"},{"name":"Physion: Evaluating Physical Prediction from Vision in Humans and Machines","publisher":"Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 2021 (NeurIPS Datasets & Benchmarks Track)","releaseDate":"2021","url":"https://physion-benchmark.github.io/","summary":"Daniel Bear, Elias Wang, Damian Mrowca, Felix Binder, Hsiao-Yu Tung, Pramod RT, Cameron Holdaway, Sirui Tao, Kevin Smith, Fan-Yun Sun, Fei-Fei Li, Nancy Kanwisher, Josh Tenenbaum, Dan Yamins, and Judith Fan.","paperLabel":"P1","anchor":"cv-publication-p1"}],"mentorship":[{"name":"Shreya Krishnamurthy","url":"https://shreyakrishnamurthy.framer.website/","status":"current","details":"B.S. UCSD","paperLabel":"P5","paperAnchor":"cv-publication-p5"},{"name":"Cecilia Lin","url":"https://www.linkedin.com/in/cecilialin1","status":"current","details":"B.S. UCSD","paperLabel":"P5","paperAnchor":"cv-publication-p5"},{"name":"Kiruthika Marikumaran","url":"https://www.linkedin.com/in/kiruthika-star14/","status":"alumni","details":"B.S. + M.S. UCSD","paperLabel":"P5","paperAnchor":"cv-publication-p5"},{"name":"Domonick Marshall","url":"https://www.linkedin.com/in/domonick-marshall-817556309/","status":"alumni","details":"B.S. UCSD","paperLabel":"P5","paperAnchor":"cv-publication-p5"},{"name":"Erin Huang","url":"https://www.linkedin.com/in/erin-huang-305389233/","status":"alumni","details":"B.S. UCSD","paperLabel":"P5","paperAnchor":"cv-publication-p5"},{"name":"Suma Vintha","url":"https://www.linkedin.com/in/suma-vintha/","status":"alumni","details":"B.S. UCSD","paperLabel":"P5","paperAnchor":"cv-publication-p5"}],"academicService":[{"date":"2026","title":"IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 2026 Journal Reviewer","summary":"1 paper."},{"date":"2026","title":"UIST 2026 Full Paper Reviewer","summary":"5 papers; Special Recognition for 2 + Highly Useful for 2."},{"date":"2026","title":"Human-Computer Interaction 2026 Journal Reviewer","summary":"1 paper."},{"date":"2026","title":"CHI 2026 UCSD Happy Hour Party Co-organizer"},{"date":"2026","title":"C&C Full Paper Reviewer","summary":"2 papers; Special Recognition for 1."},{"date":"2026","title":"DIS Full Paper Reviewer","summary":"2 papers; Special Recognition for 1."},{"date":"2026","title":"CHI Full Paper Reviewer","summary":"8 papers; Special Recognition for 3 + Highly Useful for 1."},{"date":"2025 - 2026","title":"UCSD Design Lab Weekly Research Meeting Annual Organizer"},{"date":"2025","title":"CI Extended Abstract Reviewer + Student Volunteer","summary":"1 paper."},{"date":"2025","title":"CHI Late Breaking Work Reviewer","summary":"2 papers."},{"date":"2025","title":"DIS Work-in-Progress Reviewer","summary":"1 paper."},{"date":"2024","title":"UCSD Design Lab Weekly Research Meeting Fall Quarter Co-host"}],"cvNote":"I include all my rejections on my CV following the steps of the awesome [Bradley Voytek](https://voyteklab.com/members) ([his CV](https://voyteklab.com/assets/pdfs/members/voytek_cv.pdf#page=39.11)). He said that would inspire more people to be ok with rejection, and I agree.","skills":[{"name":"Human-Computer Interaction","keywords":["User-Centered Design","Interaction Design","Prototyping","Qualitative & Quantitative Methods","A/B Testing"]},{"name":"Data Science","keywords":["Scalable Analytics","Data Visualization","MLOps","Recommender Systems","Data Mining","Database"]},{"name":"AI/ML","keywords":["LSTM","GAN","Diffusion Models","GNN","NeRF","3D Gaussian Splatting","Reinforcement Learning","LLM"]},{"name":"Software","keywords":["Python","R","SQL","Angular","D3.js","PyTorch","ClickHouse","FireStore","DevOps","Agile","AR/ VR"]},{"name":"Mathematics","keywords":["Probabilistic Reasoning","Descriptive and Inferential Statistics","Stochastic Processes"]}],"languages":[{"language":"English","fluency":"Fluent"},{"language":"Chinese","fluency":"Native"},{"language":"German","fluency":"Newbie"}],"interests":[{"name":"Research","keywords":["Design","HCI","Graphics","Creativity","Generative AI","3D Understanding","Human & Embodied Autonomous Systems","Accessibility","Fairness"]},{"name":"Real ones","keywords":["Workout","Cats & Dogs","Cooking","Climbing","Nature","Movie","Game","Badminton","Travel"]}],"references":[{"name":"Professor Steven P. Dow","url":"https://spdow.ucsd.edu/","reference":"Master Advisor for my research in HCI."},{"name":"Professor Tzu-Mao Li","url":"https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~tzli/","reference":"Master Advisor for my research in Graphics."},{"name":"Professor Judith E. Fan","url":"https://profiles.stanford.edu/judith-fan","reference":"Undergraduate advisor for my research in Intuitive Physics."}],"projects":[{"name":"Website Revamp","year":"2026","role":"Portfolio redesign","summary":"Redesigned this portfolio as a small reflective-practice experiment in AI-assisted coding, visual critique, and research storytelling.","url":"/projects/website-revamp/"},{"name":"Not A Good Driver","year":"2024","role":"VRChat world","summary":"Built a playful VRChat world while exploring virtual world creation, audience engagement, and AI-assisted production workflows.","url":"/projects/not-a-good-driver/"},{"name":"Context-Aware Encoding for LLMs","year":"2023","role":"LLM context prototype","summary":"Developed a tree-of-thoughts context encoding experiment to improve retrieval and contextual understanding.","url":"/projects/context-aware-encoding/"},{"name":"GraphHSCN","year":"2023","role":"Graph neural network prototype","summary":"Developed a novel graph neural network architecture for long-range interaction modeling.","url":"/projects/graphhscn/"}]}