Hi, my name is Lenny

Languages: C/C++/C++11, Python, Java, C#, MATLAB, JavaScript, SQL, x86
Embedded: yocto, uboot, embedded Linux distributions, kernel modules, EFR32 Gecko, Micrium RTOS
Networking: C sockets, wpa_supplicant, TCP/IP, Wireshark, tcpdump, nc
Other: Qt, LLVM, ANTLR, Jenkins, Node, ASP.NET MVC, MongoDB, SQL Server, Docker, matplotlib, scikit-learn, Git


I'm an Embedded Developer currently working at Ecobee. My goal is to build innovative products that solve real problems!

I graduated from UWaterloo's Computer Engineering program in 2019. Through the co-op program, I had the opportunity to work with several technologies, including ML infrastructure, compilers, video compression, cross-platform tooling, and web development.

As the saying goes, learning doesn't stop after formal education. To strengthen my technical and communication skills outside of work, I've built a LLVM-compatible compiler, a wifi-enabled camera on embedded Linux, and wrote blog articles.

If you would like to connect, please feel free to email me at L43cheng@edu.uwaterloo.ca.

I look forward to discussing how we can collaborate together.

Cheers,
Lenny

Work & Research Experience



Ecobee

Embedded Developer | Toronto, ON

July 2019 - present

Super excited contributing to the smart-home industry!

Keywords: yocto, uboot, embedded Linux, Gecko EFR32, Micrium RTOS, cross-platform development, GDB, binutils, networking tools, Jenkins, custom UI toolkit

LinkedIn

Software Engineering Intern | San Francisco Bay Area

Sept - Dec 2018

As a member of the Artificial Intelligence (formerly Relevance) department, I worked with Java 8, generics, and the ParSeq asynchronous library to build ML infrastructure. This included designing a module to inject plugins into a framework, exposing its public API, integrating services to extract outputs of a post-processing pipeline used on the 'Jobs' page, and attaching recovery logic to failed RPC operations. I also learned a bit about the Java Memory Model and concurrency practices.

Evertz Microsystems

Software Engineering Intern | Burlington, ON

Jan - Apr 2018

This internship was focused on video compression technologies, especially the H.264 codec and MPEG Transport Streams. I implemented features using the open-source JM H.264 Reference Software in C, built a Python test framework, and wrote an algorithm to compare distorted YUV videos. I also validated MPEG TS used in ABR streaming and built visualizations to present the results.

UWaterloo Image & Vision Computing Lab

Undergraduate Research Assistant | Waterloo, ON

Sept - Dec 2017

As an Undergraduate Research Assistant, I assisted in evaluating the perceptual uniformity of the ICtCp colour space by implementing a subjective testing program with the Blackmagic DeckLink SDK and a UHD Reference Monitor, filtering pre-test data and analyzing post-test results.

OptumSoft

Software Engineering Intern | San Francisco Bay Area

May - Aug 2017

OptumSoft is an IoT startup founded by the namesake of our School of Computer Science and former professor from Stanford University, David Cheriton. During my internship at OptumSoft, I worked on a Kalman-like algorithm that predicted the reliability of sensor readings and used C++/TACC, our in-house distributed language. I also wrote a test generator in Python that generated hundreds of tests to validate our in-house compiler and a serialization mechanism used in distributed environments.

SMART Technologies

Software Engineering Intern | Calgary, AB

Sept - Dec 2016

At SMART, I built a cross-platform C++ API to change pen settings when they contact a SMART Board© and fixed cross-platform bugs related to SMART Board© driver diagnostics tools. Working with 4 other interns, we built an educational game with Node.js that was demoed at the BETT 2017 trade show.

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC)

Application Developer Intern | Toronto, ON

Jan - Apr 2016

At CIBC, I improved an ASP.NET MVC-based communication platform used by 10+ traders by reducing performance bottlenecks by over 80%, built an instant messaging prototype with SignalR and Oracle, and developed a "What You See Is What You Get" (WYSIWYG) editor. Before leaving CIBC, I also wrote a 20-page report suggesting future improvements for the communication platform.

Fusebill

Software Developer Intern | Ottawa, ON

May - Aug 2015

At Fusebill, I created an internal querying tool with ASP.NET MVC and SQL Server to find frequent API callers and track down bottlenecks, built samples to show clients how to integrate with our RESTful API, and wrote automated tests for our marketing site. We worked in an Agile environment with two-week sprints.

Education



University of Waterloo

Computer Engineering | Bachelor of Applied Science - BASc.

Sept 2014 - June 2019

Eight academic terms, six internships, and countless cups of coffee later, I graduated from UWaterloo with a BASc. in Computer Engineering. It was fun learning about software and hardware development.

Selected Courses: Image Processing, Autonomous Vehicles, Adaptive Algorithms, Computational Intelligence, Operating Systems, Compilers, Security, Networks, Database Systems, Leadership and Influence, Personality Psychology

Technical Projects

Bluefin Compiler
Bluefin is an OOP language with a C-like syntax. It supports classes, inheritance, polymorphism, types, variables, and control blocks, and compiles to LLVM IR. Built with ANTLR, LLVM, and C++11.

SmartCam
SmartCam is a wifi-enabled camera that runs on embedded Linux. It's built with Yocto/Make and contains a bootloader, initramfs, SDK, and rootfs. I also dabbled with changing the DTB and played with kernel modules

Musical Words
Musical Words leverages machine learning and text mining techniques to pair background music to text documents. Its features include classifying, extracting topics, and summarizing text. It also applies sentiment analysis to determines the feelings expressed in text.

Pioneer Doctrina
Pioneer Doctrina is a Raspberry Pi-based car that streams videos to and accepts movement commands via RFCOMM or TCP/IP from its associated Windows App. I built it to learn about the Raspberry Pi and gain some familiarity with embedded systems.

WebServio
WebServio is a multithreaded or a multiplexed I/O web server that partially conforms to HTTP/1.1 and includes a CLI for changing configuration settings. I built it to learn new technologies and implement portions of the RFC.

Surveillance Tools
Wanting to build a project that uses diverse technologies, I developed a set of tools that sends keystrokes, files, system information, and directory structures to a remote server and polls server for operations to perform.

Swoosh
I've been thinking about building a programming language for a little over a year before finally comitting to it. Swoosh is an interpreted dynamic procedural language inspired from Pascal.

ihaveastorytoshare.com
This is a story-sharing app that authenticates users with Facebook Login and contains a RESTful API that uses Basic Authentication. NOTE: This site has been migrated to become a free subdomain on Heroku's server

CompressIt
After reading about compression algorithms, I decided to build a cross-platform desktop compression program that losslessly compresses .txt files. Average compression ratio is 60-80%.

Tower Pop
Tower Pop is a prototype of a multiplayer tower defence game that leverages k-nearest neighbour algorithm to assist players in making strategic decisions.

TCP::Chess
Having played many years of recreational chess and wanting to learn about networking protocols, I built TCP::Chess, a simple multiplayer chess game.

JobMine EZSearch
JobMine EZSearch is a web scrapping web app that downloads jobs from JobMine, UWaterloo's former co-op portal. It applies extra search filters, generates analytics, and has a "Add to/Remove from shortlist" feature. I actually used this to help find my 3rd internship!

WaterlooWorks Productivity Suite
This is the humble successor of JobMine EZSearch. This is a set of scripts that downloads jobs from WaterlooWorks (current job portal), generates Word documents from them, and notifies users of new interviews.

Stock Simulator
Picked up the Boo programming language to experiment writing fluent interfaces and a DSL on the .NET framework.

Spodometer
Spodometer is an Android app that determines a device's distance and velocity by applying kinematics equations to accelerometer readings. It also uploads velocity and distance data to Google Drive and uses local storage to store user settings.

Bouncer
While experimenting with Unreal Engine 4's visual programming tool, Blueprint, I built Bouncer, a break-breaker-style game. Bouncer includes physics simulation and animations.

Speed Match
Speed Match is a stimulating speed game that times how quickly users can identify if two images are identical. Built with Qt.

Animator
It turns out that graphing calculators can be programmed too! Animator is a series of animation programs built for the TI83/TI84 calculators. Animations include making a spiral, lines, diamonds, and writing 你好 (hello in Chinese).

Speed Match
To learn more about interpreting sensor data and using Android Studio, I built Easy Compass, a multilingual compass app for Android.

www.lennycheng.com
Thank you for visiting my website! This page is built with HTML/Bootstrap/Sass/jQuery. My blog uses Wordpress with MailChimp integration.

Memory Ultrapack
Released to the Windows Store six months after I wrote Console.WriteLine("Hello world!");, Memory Ultrapack was my first programming milestone.


Media

E-book

  • Cool Things You Can Do With Python: 27-page e-book containing six starter Python projects, including a web scraper and a Word document generator. Introduces several concepts, including HTTP verbs and multithreading. Available on the Kindle Store.

Programming Articles

Publication

  • A Right Way to Use Inductive Reasoning: 5-page paper in "Pi in the Sky", a math magazine sponsored by the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences, that demonstrates how to find and prove with induction the formula that determines the maximum number of regions formed by an inscribed convex polygon and its intersecting diagonals

News

  • [CBC] University of Waterloo students want two-ply toilet paper on campus, student councillors say : This is kind of funny. As elected student representatives, we usually advocate for more important issues on campus, such as legal service support (eg, against predatory housing), student outreach programs, and mental health initiatives. With that said, 1-ply toilet paper is quite unpleasant and students had enough of it ;p
  • [Imprint] The breakdown of the 2018 Co-op Education fee raise : Co-op opens many doors, but there are legitimate reasons for advocating against a fee raise that doesn't improve service, especially when many students report being treated unethically by co-op staff. The petition referenced in the article drew 3000+ supporters in 3 weeks, and received attention from the Board of Governors, Provost's Office, our Student Union, and two student newspapers. Although the petition didn't stop the 18/19 co-op fee raise (3 Governors abstained and 1 objected to the fee raise!), the University decided not to increase co-op fees for 19/20, the first no-increase in many years.

Let's chat!

Whether you're a recruiter or a student, a psychologist or a scuba diver, a writer or an engineer, I'm interested in exploring how we can work together to accomplish greater challenges.

If you would like to connect, please feel free to reach me at L43cheng@edu.uwaterloo.ca. (The reason there isn't a contact form is because forwarded emails from contact forms might be marked as spam and automatically placed in a Spam folder. If you're taking the time to reach out to me, I want to be sure that I could receive your email and followup with you.)