Kevin Zhao

Experience

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  Pacific National Exhibition (PNE)

  Aug 2019 - Sept 2019

  Fair Ambassador
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  EJS School of Music

  Sept 2019 - Jun 2020

  Piano Teacher

  • Developed curriculums and lesson plans for piano lessons for students aged 6-12.• Taught piano lessons; established relationships with students’ parents and communicated progress to students’ parents.

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  UBC Geering Up Engineering Outreach

  Jan 2020 - Apr 2020

  Instructor

  - Teaching topics in the field of science, engineering, and technology to youth ages 6 to 12- Developing engaging learning activities to inspire and encourage interest in STEAM fields.

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  Keyz.io Ltd

  Apr 2020 - May 2023

  Founder

  • Founded a company designing and manufacturing custom enthusiast keyboards.• Proficient with EDA tools and the C programming language, designed keyboard hardware and firmware for the enthusiast market with thousands of units sold to date.• Developed PCB test jigs and firmware programming scripts to automatically program and test keyboard firmware in high-volumes. Saved over a hundred hours with automation scripts and custom testing hardware.• Operated in a high-pressure work environment to meet strict product launch deadlines and delivery dates.• Negotiated terms with materials suppliers and manufacturing partners to meet product design specifications and financial targets. Show less

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  UBC Electrical and Computer Engineering

  Sept 2022 - Jun 2024

  • Investigated defences against CPU cache side-channels related to Spectre/Meltdown security vulnerabilities.• Implemented micro-architectural defences in CPU simulators• Developed scripts for automating performance benchmarking and data collection• Co-supervised by Dr. Prashant Nair and Dr. Mieszko Lis

  • Undergraduate Research Assistant

    May 2022 - Jun 2024

  • Teaching Assistant

    Sept 2022 - May 2023
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  Microsoft

  May 2023 - Jul 2023

  Silicon Engineering Intern

  • Improved and expedited silicon validation through improvements to proprietary test framework and firmware in C.• Shortened development times with the implementation of gdb-compliant post-mortem debugging for RISC-V.• Designed and implemented a robust software abstraction that facilitated the execution of I/O operations on embedded hardware, improving code reusability.• Developed Python scripts for more efficient debugging workflows through automated file parsing, debugging output, and generating core dump files. Show less

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  Microsoft

  Jul 2024 - now

  Silicon Engineer