Andrew Cheung (he/him)

Andrew

Hi! I’m Andrew, a second-year PhD student at UCSD CSE. I work in the Programming Systems group!

Contact me: a7cheung@ucsd.edu

Are you a UCSD undergrad/master’s student interested in research? Let’s chat – I don’t bite!

Research

In general, my research motivation is to make it easier to write tricky code1.

Right now my main focus is on FluxOpt, a project which uses Flux to help embedded systems developers debloat their binaries by optimizing away provably-unused code.

Some other projects I’ve worked on:

  • Chompy is a tool which uses equality saturation to automatically find conditional rulesets (i.e., rewrite rules which only apply under certain conditions, such as if x != 0 then x / x = 1).
  • SmartLearningHub is a project which helps introductory programming students learn alongside an AI tutor.

Before UCSD, I was at the University of Washington, where I worked on projects aiming to make it easier for developers to work with hardware. One of these projects was Lakeroad (ASPLOS 2024), a hardware compilation tool which uses program synthesis to automatically compile designs to FPGA primitives.

Industry

I try to use my research to solve “real-world problems”, and I find that industry is a great place to see what problems are out there! I’ve been fortunate to work with some amazing people at some amazing companies.

This past summer, I worked with Sudipta Kundu at Synopsys, where I explored how to use equality saturation to optimize hardware designs.

Before that, I interned for Jin Yang at Intel Labs, where I used industry-grade formal verification tools to check the correctness of part of an accelerator.

Other Stuff

In addition to research, I have a strong passion for teaching. Few things are as rewarding as making CS education a more inclusive, approachable, and fun experience for everyone. Before I started my PhD, at UW I was with the TA program for the intro sequence for 5 years, and it’s something I’m continuing to do here at UCSD!

One of my favorite jobs was being the TA Coordinator for the intro sequence, where I led over 100 TAs and interviewed, hired, and trained our quarterly cohort of new TAs alongside the amazing Chloe Fong.

Some highlights:

  • Here’s a picture of us from Spring 2023 (I’m in the middle wearing the turtleneck)!

  • Here’s a documentary by Northeastern University’s Center for Inclusive Computing that highlights the world-class TA program that I’m very lucky to have been a part of.

When I’m not teaching or doing research, I like to improve my mediocre abilities as an amateur chef, programmer, and artist. Recently, I’ve discovered a love for running and lifting heavy things.

I also enjoy playing Dota, which is kind of like lifting four really heavy things at once.

These days, I’m:

  • Reading: Dune by Frank Herbert
  • Listening: Fancy That by PinkPantheress
  • Playing: a bad amount of Dota
  • Watching: Kill Bill for the millionth time
  • Drawing: lots of cats on the whiteboard


  1. I stole this line from my old advisor, Zachary Tatlock. ↩

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