Caltech Club for Computer Science

Full Name: Cheng William Hong

Hometown: Singapore

High School: Raffles Junior College

Academic and research interests: My research interests are in computational biology. Along with several other students, I am working with Dr. Christopher Snow on a protein folding project in collaboration with Stanford University. Predicting the 3D structure of a protein is extremely difficult due to the size of the search space, and since it has practical applications to basic science research, drug design and discovery, and protein action, it is especially rewarding. We have a paper that was recently accepted by the Journal of Computational Chemistry about our work in developing software and computational techniques for this. Currently, we are working on extending our structure prediction capabilities to include small molecules and substrates in order to study interactions and reaction dynamics.

Some of the classes here I’ve really enjoyed are in the areas of complexity, algorithms and information theory. During the summer of my sophomore year I have also done research in discrete mathematics. I am an undergraduate teaching assistant for CS 1, CS 21 and CS 38, which serve as the general introduction to CS, computability and complexity, and algorithms respectively. As my interests also lie with the biological sciences, I have taken classes in genetics, biochemistry and organic chemistry as well.

Other activities: I also serve as a volunteer tutor for Caltech’s RISE program for high school students struggling with mathematics and science. I have taken part in the last Student/Faculty Conference to discuss improvements to the Core curriculum and the EE/CS options at Caltech. I am a former member of the Board of Control. In my free time I am an avid bridge player, and played in the 2008 North American College Bridge Contest in which Caltech won first place.

Future plans: I have recently accepted an offer of employment as a Software Development Engineer (SDE) at Microsoft’s Mountain View campus. I hope to attend medical school soon, tackling problems in biology, chemistry and medicine to improve the quality of human life while utilizing my CS background.