About
A person, not just a repo list.
Engineering is one part of how I work. The rest is organizing people, helping classmates, making things and staying curious.
I'm Ray Tian, a first-year Honours Mathematics (Co-op) student at the University of Waterloo. I'm interested in data-driven problem solving, product development and technology-enabled business solutions. I like problems that start from something concrete: a bug I can reproduce, a tool classmates actually need, a group that needs organizing. Away from the keyboard I play table tennis and piano, follow open-source projects, and enjoy rhythm games and interactive digital experiences.
Interests
- Table tennis
- Piano / music
- Open-source software
- Applied mathematics
- Data science
- Programming and technology
- Rhythm games (osu!mania)
- Interactive games and digital experiences
Skills, honestly tiered
- Data & Analytics
- Coursework: MATH 135 Algebra, MATH 137 Calculus 1, ECON 101 Introductory Microeconomics. Learning: SQL and Python (introductory, not proficient). Practice: reproducible test cases, checking a fix against before-and-after results, time-zone and date handling (job-ops PR).
- Product & Workflow
- Turning a real student need into a scoped tool (WatDesk); bilingual English and Simplified Chinese interface and copy; GitHub issues, pull requests and maintainer communication; CI checks in GitHub Actions; organizing study groups and a peer listening group.
- Development Tools
- Git, GitHub, GitHub Actions, Vite, Vitest, browser-extension APIs (Manifest V3), ASan/UBSan (used in Madeira PRs); AI coding assistants, used with review and testing as described above.
- Programming Exposure
- Project use: TypeScript, JavaScript, React (WatDesk). Coursework: Racket (CS 135). Limited exposure: C, Swift, Rust, Python (open-source pull requests and personal projects, with AI coding assistance). Introductory: SQL.
- Languages
- Mandarin Chinese — Native · English — IELTS Academic Overall Band 7.0