Summary
David Chan is a Postdoctoral Scholar at UC Berkeley with 11 years of experience at the intersection of multi-modal representation learning, human-centered foundation models, and assistive AI. He completed a PhD and MS at Berkeley and has combined academic rigor with industry impact through roles at Amazon Lab126, Google AI, Dropbox, and NASA JPL, where he productionized ML systems and developed reinforcement learning and conversational AI solutions. His background spans algorithm design, distributed low-dimensional embeddings, and building practical RL agents for real-world and space applications, plus teaching and curriculum development in CS. Based in Oakland, he blends deep research expertise with hands-on engineering fluency, often translating novel models into scalable, user-facing systems. An under-the-radar thread across his career is a sustained focus on human-centric AI — designing models and interfaces that assist people in real contexts.
11 years of coding experience
11 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD Assistive Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Doctor of Philosophy - PhD Assistive Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning at University of California, Berkeley
Bachelor of Science (BS) Summa Cum Laude Computer Science Mathematics, Bachelor of Science (BS) Summa Cum Laude Computer Science Mathematics at University of Denver
English, French, Italian