CV

PDF

Education, research experience, teaching, publications, and the practical version of the story.

The web CV, JSON Resume, and PDF share the same current public record.

Sections

Contact Information

Name Sirui Tao
Professional Title Researcher, Engineer, and Designer
Email s1tao@ucsd.edu
Location 9510 Innovation Ln, La Jolla, California CA 92093
Website https://dylantao.github.io/

Professional 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.

Education

  • Doctor of Philosophy

    University of California San Diego

    Cognitive Science

    • Research in Human-computer-interaction & Design, advised by Prof. Steven P. Dow.

  • Master of Science

    University of California San Diego

    Computer Science and Engineering

  • Bachelor of Science

    University of California San Diego

    Data Science & Probability and Statistics

Research Experience

  • Graduate Student Researcher

    UCSD, ProtoLab

    Investigating generative models for contextual multimodal documents to aid designers and support collaborative scenarios.

  • Graduate Student Researcher

    UCSD, Tzu-Mao Li's Lab

    Combining neural methods and traditional graphics pipelines to enable flexible and fast-forward physical interaction prediction; studying inverse physical prediction using diffusion-based models.

  • Undergraduate Researcher

    UCSD, HDSI

    Developed GraphHSCN, a novel graph neural network architecture for long-range interaction modeling.

  • Undergraduate Researcher

    UCSD, CogTools Lab

    Contributed to Physion and Physion++, focusing on data analysis and designing 3D stimuli for non-rigid physical interactions.

Publications (& Rejections)

Honors & Awards (& Rejections)

Research Mentorship

Current

Alumni

Fun fact: every intern I’ve mentored so far has worked on [P5], the twice-rejected paper. Hopefully the rejection streak ends soon :-)

Teaching Experience

Academic Service

  • IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 2026 Journal Reviewer

    1 paper.

  • UIST 2026 Full Paper Reviewer

    5 papers; Special Recognition for 2 + Highly Useful for 2.

  • Human-Computer Interaction 2026 Journal Reviewer

    1 paper.

  • CHI 2026 UCSD Happy Hour Party Co-organizer

  • C&C Full Paper Reviewer

    2 papers; Special Recognition for 1.

  • DIS Full Paper Reviewer

    2 papers; Special Recognition for 1.

  • CHI Full Paper Reviewer

    8 papers; Special Recognition for 3 + Highly Useful for 1.

  • UCSD Design Lab Weekly Research Meeting Annual Organizer

  • CI Extended Abstract Reviewer + Student Volunteer

    1 paper.

  • CHI Late Breaking Work Reviewer

    2 papers.

  • DIS Work-in-Progress Reviewer

    1 paper.

  • UCSD Design Lab Weekly Research Meeting Fall Quarter Co-host

Industry Experience

  • Designer

    Smart Learning Hub

    Designing useful, delightful experiences for instructors and students as a UCSD GSR. Built a collection of 124k+ course listings from 27 universities and 288 teaching-plan examples.

  • PhD Intern, AI Research – Datasets & Benchmarks

    Autodesk

    Developed the Process–Artifact–Learning (PAL) evaluation protocol and a Fusion add-in that records AI-assisted CAD proposals, edits, validation checks, and human decisions. Primary mentor/manager: Will McCarthy; mentors: Vivian Liu and Anubrata Das.

  • Garage Startup Intern

    MAVERiC Studio

    Explored virtual world creation, metaverse audience engagement, and AI tools. Built ‘Not A Good Driver’. Try it here.

  • Data Engineer

    SchedGo

    Built data infrastructure and conducted analytics; developed marketing data analytics to identify key user groups; designed a survey model for front-end user feedback.

  • Deep Learning Engineer Intern

    San Diego Supercomputer Center

    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.

  • Data Scientist Intern

    Tesla

    Developed lossless image compression solutions and advanced statistical process control tools.

  • Data Scientist Intern

    Buhler Group

    Initiated MLOps image-labeling features for defect detection and prototyped cross-functional innovation tools.

  • Analyst Intern

    J.D. Power

    Optimized workflow for quality analytics by automating data processing and report pipelines.

  • Data Analyst Intern

    Bosch

    Developed Tableau dashboards for manufacturing analytics; reduced bottleneck diagnosing time by 80%.

  • Data Science Student Representative

    Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute, UC San Diego

    Represented HDSI students to improve the data science program and curriculum.

    • Peer-advised HDSI undergraduate students.
    • Evaluated and improved the data science curriculum.
    • Promoted the program to external audiences.

  • Mentor at UCSD

    Mentor Collective

    Mentored first-year and transfer students at UCSD to help them adapt to university life.

    • Provided guidance and support for new UCSD students.
    • Facilitated connections to campus resources and communities.

Projects

  • Website Revamp

    2026 Portfolio redesign

    Redesigned this portfolio as a small reflective-practice experiment in AI-assisted coding, visual critique, and research storytelling.

  • Not A Good Driver

    2024 VRChat world

    Built a playful VRChat world while exploring virtual world creation, audience engagement, and AI-assisted production workflows.

  • Context-Aware Encoding for LLMs

    2023 LLM context prototype

    Developed a tree-of-thoughts context encoding experiment to improve retrieval and contextual understanding.

  • GraphHSCN

    2023 Graph neural network prototype

    Developed a novel graph neural network architecture for long-range interaction modeling.

Skills

Human-Computer Interaction: User-Centered Design, Interaction Design, Prototyping, Qualitative & Quantitative Methods, A/B Testing
Data Science: Scalable Analytics, Data Visualization, MLOps, Recommender Systems, Data Mining, Database
AI/ML: LSTM, GAN, Diffusion Models, GNN, NeRF, 3D Gaussian Splatting, Reinforcement Learning, LLM
Software: Python, R, SQL, Angular, D3.js, PyTorch, ClickHouse, FireStore, DevOps, Agile, AR/ VR
Mathematics: Probabilistic Reasoning, Descriptive and Inferential Statistics, Stochastic Processes

Languages

English : Fluent
Chinese : Native
German : Newbie

Interests

Research: Design, HCI, Graphics, Creativity, Generative AI, 3D Understanding, Human & Embodied Autonomous Systems, Accessibility, Fairness
Real ones: Workout, Cats & Dogs, Cooking, Climbing, Nature, Movie, Game, Badminton, Travel

References

Note

I include all my rejections on my CV following the steps of the awesome Bradley Voytek (his CV). He said that would inspire more people to be ok with rejection, and I agree.