William Luo Qian (né Luo Qian) is currently a Ph.D. student at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). Prior to that, I was a software engineer at Facebook, Inc., where I worked on the 4G/LTE core stack for a 4G/LTE-backed SDN. I graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in June, 2016 with a double Bachelor of Science (SB) degree in Computer Science and Engineering, and in Mathematics. I also received a Master of Engineering (MEng) degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in September, 2016.

One of my passions is software engineering. In my free time, I often write applications in C, Python, or PHP/HTML/CSS/JavaScript. When not coding, I like to enjoy the company of a friends, which sometimes includes spending time playing co-op video games. On my own, I occasionally draw pencil sketches, draft website frameworks and designs, practice viola or piano, or take strolls around Boston. Sometimes, I can be found consuming vast quantities of Japanese culture, from its language and linguistics to its arts and media.

Favorite manga: Detective Conan (名探偵コナン)
Favorite anime: Your Name...? (君の名は)

Recently, I have become very interested in parallel processing and algorithms, and their potential impact on the future of computing. With transistors and clock speed tactics reaching their limits, parallelization is an obvious choice for improving computing power in machines. With my belief that parallelization will change the future of computing, I would full-heartedly put my effort into parallelization schema.

My secondary research interests lie in automation, especially in automated predictions. This ranges from consumer-focused filtering (such as Google Ads), to predicting an object based on only a silhouette or fragment thereof, to predicting words and phrases based on context, intonation, and other verbal cues. Roughly speaking, my primary interest is being able to use automated systems to improve upon human recognition abilities.

Finally, my tertiary research interests lie in security and systems, especially related to web networks. Most critically, I aim to implement various kinds of security on most of my websites, using various techniques, tricks, and tactics to obfuscate the security methods while providing a systematic method of anti-forgery and anti-theft.

However, I personally believe that these three subjects are closely linked, as parallelization improvements will be conducive towards faster automation, and better automation will help improve the thoroughness of cybersecurity, and so on. I would love to talk more about any of these subjects, or others!

Presently, I have been involved in a variety of projects, mostly involving websites.

• Pjango (2013)
  Pjango is a PHP-based web framework that is designed to emulate the template-rendering system in Django, written for Python. In an object-oriented style (rare for PHP), the framework utilizes classes and static functions to grab, render, and deliver template files to similar effects as Django. Since it uses the same template syntax as Django, the conversion between the two frameworks has become simply a matter of implementation, especially as between the built-in tags and filters.
• MIT Maseeh Hall Website (2012–2016)
  A collaborative effort with Austin Fathman, the Maseeh Hall website features a two-framework system, with a flashy PHP frontend and a certificate-secured Django backend. I am responsible primarily for the Django backend, though I have helped write apps for the PHP frontend as well.
• Freshmen Rooming Directory (2012–2015)
  A web application for MIT freshmen to find their roommates, based on their rooming assignments, released in mid-July each year. Features extensive HTML5, CSS3, and SVG use, and was one of the first HTML5/CSS3 sites I worked on. I now update it every year for the incoming class of freshmen.
• Thomas Jefferson Invitational Open in Informatics (TJ IOI) (2011–2012)
  The TJ IOI was a high school CS competition that I started my senior year in high school. Hosted by the computer teams at my high school, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST), the competition is designed to invoke the interests of CS students from the area by providing educational material for CS topics normally taught in entry-level college CS courses. With a predominant focus on algorithms and efficiency, the competition is entering its third year in the 2013-2014 school year.
• TJHSST Varsity Math Team (VMT) (2010-2012)
  I remastered the VMT website in 2010 and served as webmaster from 2010 until 2012.
• TJHSST Intermediate Computer Team (ICT) (2010-2011)
  I started the ICT in the fall of 2009, and created the website after the first year of the team. Since then, the TJ ICT has become quite successful in various competitions, including several ACM-styled competitions, such as high school programming competitions hosted by VCU and UVA. TJ ICT also participates in the American Computer Science League (ACSL). This website has since been disused, so it is currently hosted on my high school personal server.

 

Pjango is a PHP framework that emulates the Django web framework's template rendering system. By separating the serverside and clientside code, design and utility can be easily separated and individually controlled. Furthermore, this kind of MVC system provides for ease of development transition from between different site version; the advantages go on and on.

Unfortunately, not all servers currently support Django, or even Python. But, since PHP is very widespread, between PHP and Python/Django, most servers will be able to run the templates drawn in Django's template format simply by choosing Django or Pjango based on the serverside scripting language.

Pjango's current version package can be downloaded at: Pjango v1.2.0 (March 4, 2014). [TGZ] [ZIP]