VISUAL WEB AUTHORING
PaperWeb
From a blank canvas to a website you can own. A visual authoring tool with a shared document model, editable components and standalone web export.
Independent project · AI-assisted development · 2026
STUDENT. BUILDER. ALWAYS CURIOUS.
I build to
understand.
I’m Eric Zhao, an HKU undergraduate spending 2026–27 at UC Berkeley. I build useful tools and explore the systems that make them work.
Operating systems · Networks · AI infrastructure
01 / SELECTED WORK
Ideas, made tangible.
Tools built around real problems, with attention to the details underneath.
DATA PIPELINES & EVERYDAY TOOLS
Schedule Planner
One place for scattered course deadlines. A Berkeley course planner that brings public schedules and calendar feeds together, with refresh recovery and a private personal layer.
Independent project · AI-assisted development · 2026
MORE FROM THE WORKBENCH
GitHub/01
Market data pipeline
A staged Futu-to-Qlib workflow: fetch, normalize, build binary features, then verify the dataset.
Python / Qlib / Data engineeringView source/02
Space Fight
A four-person C++ terminal game with a state-driven game loop, enemy waves, a boss encounter and persistent leaderboards.
C++ / ncurses / Team projectView source/03
Market microstructure prediction
Led a team to 51st of 164. Processed 43 million training rows across 500 stocks, using time-split validation with LightGBM.
Python / Polars / LightGBMProject in my CV/04
U.S. daily birth counts
A reproducible R analysis of 7,670 daily observations, exploring calendar, holiday and seasonal patterns through visualizations.
R / R Markdown / ggplot2View source02 / SYSTEMS FOUNDATIONS
A little closer to the machine.
The coursework and independent study behind my interest in systems.
INDEPENDENT STUDY · FALL 2025
uCore operating systems labs
Worked through the Tsinghua online OS labs up to Lab 5, studying physical and virtual memory, kernel threads and user processes.
What I explored
Traced x86 boot flow, bootloader execution and ELF kernel loading with GDB breakpoints and disassembly.
CS 168 COURSE PROJECTS · SUMMER 2026
From packets to connections
Implemented a Python traceroute, distance-vector routing and TCP socket logic across networking course projects.
Implementation details
Worked with IPv4, ICMP and UDP parsing, malformed-response validation, route expiry, split horizon and TCP connection states.
CS 161 TEAM PROJECT · SUMMER 2026
Secure file sharing
Co-developed a Go file-sharing client with encrypted storage, integrity checks, sharing invitations and access revocation.
What the project covered
Explored how encryption, authentication and key management fit together when storage cannot be trusted.
03 / ABOUT
Curiosity is the
common thread.
My degree is in actuarial science, but the questions I keep coming back to are about computers: how a process gets memory, how packets find their way, and how software stays useful when something fails.
I learn by moving between foundations and things I can use. That has taken me from C++ and an operating-systems lab to network protocols, web tools and data pipelines.
I use AI coding tools in my independent software projects, alongside coursework, debugging and hands-on study. I’m interested in systems research and engineering opportunities where I can keep building that depth.
TOOLS I WORK WITH
EDUCATION & CURRENT STUDY
University of California, Berkeley
Visiting student · Computing and Data Science (non-degree)
Completed · Summer 2026
CS 161 Computer Security A
CS 168 Internet Architecture & Protocols A
In progress · Fall 2026
CS 61B Data Structures
CS 61C Computer Architecture
CS 162 Operating Systems
The University of Hong Kong
BSc in Actuarial Science
Selected HKU coursework
Computer Programming · Programming Technologies · Discrete Mathematics · Introduction to Data Science · Mathematical Methods I & II · Probability and Statistics · Mathematical Statistics · Stochastic Models · Linear Models and Forecasting
04 / SAY HELLO
Let’s build
something worthwhile.
Have a systems problem, a research idea or an engineering opportunity? I’d be glad to hear about it.