Taichi Kato

My name is Taichi, a freshman at Amherst College, MA. I love to build, and am currently freelancing as a full-stack engineer specializing in scaling machine learning solutions.

From 2016 to 2019, my big project was Questo, an AI study assistant which dynamically generates comprehension quizzes based on textbooks and websites. Questo has won several awards, receiving more than $160,000 in subsidised funding from IBM and Google Cloud. With more than 10,000 users, Questo was used by students across the globe to make learning more efficient. Questo was founded on my belief that knowledge acquisition can vastly be accelerated through the assistance of AI. I still believe that, but Questo was sunsetted due to high developmental costs in 2019. I am actively looking for opportunities in using machine learning to make education more accessible.

The same summer, I was also privillaged to work as a deep learning researcher at Digital Nature Group, where along with Prof. Ochyai, worked on 2D image to 3D voxel generation using GANs. In the summer of 2017, I was a software engineer intern at teamLab working on client iOS applciations (I was the youngest employee ever at 15 years old). You can learn more by checking out my résumé.

Please feel free to reach out to me via email. You can also find me on twitter, instagram, or linkedin.

Projects 🚀

Some projects I have worked on / am working on.

  • (2020 – Current) Stay tuned 🤫
  • Zipcall (2020) - Peer to peer browser video calling platform with unmatched video quality and latency. 2.8k stars on GitHub. Added support for group calling as a contributor.
  • Kafka NLP (2020) – NLP framework for iOS, including POS tagging and Dependency Parsing, implemented with CoreML.
  • Questo AI (2016-2019) - An AI study assistant which dynamically generates comprehension quizzes based on textbooks and websites
  • Photonify (2017) - An iOS camera which suggests better compositions in real time
  • Photography (2014- Present)
  • Hequals (2017) - An automatic human resource allocator which aims to eliminate any form of discrimination in the tech world by basing decisions purely on skills.
  • Komme (2015) - A virtual navigation game to find ways to get to a certain location only through Google Streetview - made with js.
  • RealAR - Created a prototype iOS framework for creating shared AR environement between multiple devices through socket. (BUT Apple ended up including it in their ARKit on iOS12 in June)
  • Kanji Frequency (2018) - Visualising and ordering kanjis in order of importance to learn only the important ones :)

Achievements and Experiences 🏆

  • Lead organiser of YouthHacks 2019, partnered with Google, Reactor School and the Singaporean government, attracted amazing mentors and judges from Google, StartupX, Temasek Holdings and more. With $5000 funding from National Youth Council, we sponsored more than 180 students a weekend full of coding and seminars.
  • iOS intern at teamLab when I was 15 (youngest employee ever 🥳). I was primarily involved in the architecture design and the development of iOS apps. I also introduced and integrated Redux as a primary framework for all of teamLab's upcoming iOS projects, creating a template project.
  • Won $40,000 in prizes for the "Most Creative" prize at Startup Weekend - the most prestegious hackathon in SG.
  • Lead organiser of ideaHacks_ 2018, partnered with StartupX, Acronis and Carousell, attracted amazing mentors and judges from CitiBank, Temasek Holdings, IBM and more. Around 100 students participated in a weekend full of coding.
  • Winner of PitchIT Competition at SG Fintech Festival 2016
  • Won ideaHacks 2016 with Questo.
  • Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself.
    – Sartre