AlphaZero on Chinese Checkers

AlphaZero on Chinese Checkers

MSc Research

2025 – Present

Training and analyzing AlphaZero on solved Chinese Checkers variants.

Built a full AlphaZero implementation from scratch in JAX/Flax. JIT compilation and parallelized self-play achieved a 64x speedup on a compute cluster. Using solved game-theoretic values as ground truth to analyze training dynamics.

AI RL NNs JAX Python AlphaZero
nicolasong.com

nicolasong.com

2024 – Present

This website — built with Eleventy and WebC.

Static site generation with Eleventy, WebC components, Firebase Hosting.

Eleventy WebC
Graph Plus

Graph Plus

Obsidian Plugin

A plugin for Obsidian with typed links.

Obsidian
Duckiebot Robotics

Duckiebot Robotics

CMPUT 503

2025

Autonomous driving with the Duckiebot platform.

Worked with ROS to implement odometry and lane following on a Duckiebot.

  • Odometry with wheel encoders
  • Lane following with computer vision
  • AprilTag detection
  • PID and MPC controllers
ROS Python OpenCV

Unified Examination of Entity Linking in Absence of Candidate Sets (NAACL 2024)

Unified Examination of Entity Linking in Absence of Candidate Sets (NAACL 2024)

NLP Research

2023 – 2024

Published research on entity linking at NAACL 2024.

Research on entity linking, accepted in the NAACL 2024 Main Conference.

  • Collaborated with SFU's Natlang Lab
  • Evaluated existing end to end entity linking methods
  • Conducted candidate set ablation studies
NLP Python Research
Mandelbrot Shader

Mandelbrot Shader

2022

A GPU-accelerated Mandelbrot set renderer.

Vulkan Compute Shader GLSL Graphics

Ray Tracer

Ray Tracer

2021

A ray tracer with reflections, refractions, and soft shadows.

Vulkan Compute Shader Ray Tracing C++ Graphics

Asteroid Eater

Asteroid Eater

Personal

2020

A space game with procedurally generated asteroids.

LOVE2D Procedural Generation
Bitcoin Lite

Bitcoin Lite

Personal

2019

A simplified blockchain implementation.

A from-scratch blockchain implementation based on the original whitepaper demonstrating proof-of-work, transaction validation, and peer-to-peer networking.

Python Networking
tree-chan

tree-chan

Personal

2019

A forum-style discussion platform.

JavaScript Node.js SQL
itemRanker

itemRanker

Personal

2019

An app for ranking items via pairwise comparisons.

Features:

  • Users can create both normal lists and tier lists.
  • Tournament mode where users rank items by selecting the better item from pairs.
Android Java
Island Generator

Island Generator

Personal

2018

Procedural island and city generation.

LOVE2D Procedural Generation