1. XIAOXIN REN
Address: 362 Cambridge Ter., Apt. A, Davis, CA 95618 Tel: (530) 601-0946
Email: xren@ucdavis.edu Home page: http://shuangfengderen.github.io/
OBJECTIVE
Intend to find a full-time job in Software Engineering
EDUCATION
University of California, Davis GPA: 3.94/4.0
• Ph.D. Department of Applied Science 2010 to 2016
• M.S. Department of Computer Science 2013 to 2016
University of Science and Technology of China GPA: 3.7/4.0
• B.S. Department of Modern Physics 2006 to 2010
SKILLS & EXPERIENCE
Programming/Simulation tools
• Programming skills: Python, C++, C, JavaScript, D3, HTML, CSS, Matlab, Java, IDL
• Simulation tools: CODE V, LabVIEW, Agilent ADS, CST MICROWAVE STUDIO, HFSS
Selected Courses, Course Projects, and Experience
• Graduate Courses: Numerical Methods, Mathematical Methods, Algorithm Design, Computer Architecture, Big Data
Visualization, Operating Systems, Software Engineering, Advanced Electromagnetics, RF & Microwaves, and RF IC
design.
• Course Project 1: Implemented many numerical methods with Matlab. Gained deep understanding of the algorithms for
solving a variety of numerical problems. Some of them include: Gaussian Elimination, Household Reduction, Singular
Value Decomposition, Jacobi method, Neville’s algorithm, Bairstow’s method, and Linear programming.
• Couse Project 2: Took the Mining Software Repositories (MSR) 2013 Challenge for Software Engineering. The
challenge provides big SQL table with information (say commits, comments and contributors, etc.) about 20+ popular
software from GitHub. Intended to find out what would affect the bug-fixing time of software and observed interesting
results. Gained experience with MySQL and Java during this process.
• Course Project 3: Designed a zoomable sunburst tree with D3 for Big Data Visualization to show big data publications
evolution over time. Gained experience with web design using JavaScript, D3, html, and CSS.
• Course Project 4: Conducted a Dimensional Reduction (DR) project for Big Data Visualization. Intended to map
attributes of High Dimensional (HD) data to 2D star coordinates, based on their correlations in HD space. Due to the
latency of most iterative optimization methods, I came up with a different optimization approach without iteration for
efficiency, and also implemented the approach as a web application (HalfCircle on Homepage). Gained experience with
numerical optimization methods, and more experience with web design.
• Teaching Assistant: Electrical and Computer Engineering (EEC) 132, RF and Microwaves in Wireless Communication
senior/graduate lecture and laboratory; gained experience with Microstrip passive and active circuit design.
• Hands-on experience: Experienced in surface mount components soldering; frequently used Vector network analyzer,
spectrum analyzer, oscilloscope, sweep oscillator, power meter and sensor; with extra experience with Backward wave
oscillator (BWO), anechoic chamber, and probe station.
RESEARCH PROJECTS
B.S. Plasma Center of University of Science and Technology of China 2009 to 2010
Advisor: Prof. Jian Zheng
• Wrote a LabVIEW program to effectively control the motion of several motor-driven stages.

2. Ph.D. UC Davis Microwave/Millimeter-Wave Research Center 2010 to present
Advisor: Prof. Neville C. Luhmann, Jr.
• Helped to test, troubleshoot, and fix the Electronics board for millimeter wave passive radiometric Electron Cyclotron
Emission Imaging (ECEI) system.
• Develop and design a Microwave Imaging Reflectometer (MIR) instrument, a radar-like system to detect millimeter
scale density turbulence inside magnetic fusion plasmas.
• Developed analysis tools with IDL, Matlab, and the CodeV optical design and analysis tool to construct a numerical
MIR diagnostics tool for designing and assessing the performance of real MIR systems. This work is summarized for
publication.
• Co-worked to design the optical lenses, which are fabricated with HDPE and with great flexibility and high resolution,
for MIR using CodeV.
• Characterized and tested the MIR electronic boards using a variety of measurement instruments, including RF sources,
spectrum analyzers, and Network Analyzer.
• Characterized and optimized the performance of optical lenses, which are installed on the DIII-D Tokamak device
located at General Atomics in San Diego.
M.S UC Davis Big Data Visualization and Interface Design Innovation Group 2013 to present
Advisor: Prof. Kwan-Liu Ma
• Came up with a method to quantify uncertainties of different DR methods. Investigated many DR methods: PCA, MDS,
t-SNE, local affine multidimensional projection (LAMP), LSP, part-linear multidimensional projection (PLMP), etc.
One approach is to measure how neighbors are preserved after projection in both order and quantity. The work involved
with implementation of LSH and some DR methods. Python and MATLAB are extensively used.
• As an extension of Course Project 4, HalfCircle layout is extended to fully circle with iterative optimization method,
say BFGS. Data is also partitioned, to demonstrate how attribute correlations vary along different data clusters. The
final layout is like a Jellyfish (JellyFish on Homepage). Gained experience of optimization function design, and more
experience with optimization methods.
• Sankey diagram is used to show similar information as JellyFish. Attributes are clustered using hierarchical clustering
based on their HD space correlation for each data cluster. The interactive layout is on my Homepage as Sankey. Gained
more experience with clustering and web design.
PUBLICATIONS (First author)
• “Evaluation of the Operating Space for Density Fluctuation Measurements Employing 2D Imaging Reflectometry”,
X. Ren, C. W. Domier, N. C. Luhmann, Jr, etc., Rev. of Sci. Instrum., Vol. 83, Issue 10, 2012
• “Process to Generate a Synthetic Diagnostic for Microwave Imaging Reflectometry with the Full-wave Code
FWR2D” X. Ren, C. W. Domier, N. C. Luhmann, Jr, etc., Rev. Sci. Instrum., Vol. 85, 11D863, 2014
• “Microwave Imaging Reflectometry for the Study of Edge Harmonic Oscillations on DIII-D”, X. Ren, M. Chen,
C.W. Domier, N. C. Luhmann, Jr, et al.., Journal of Instrumentation, Vol. 10, 2015
References
Neville C. Luhmann, Jr.
• Title: UC Davis Distinguished Professor, Applied Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering
• Phone: (530) 752-5414
• Email: ncluhmann@ucdavis.edu
Kwan-Liu Ma
• Title: UC Davis Professor, Computer Science
• Phone: 530-752-6958
• Email: ma@cs.ucdavis.edu