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Benjamin Yang

Education

PhD in Computer Science, Columbia University

Subjects

VR/AR, Machine Learning, Computer Graphics

Achievements

Earned Summa Cum Laude and Highest Honors in Computer Science at Rutgers University. Member of elite honors societies: Cap & Skull, Honors College Scholar, Dean’s Lists at both Columbia and Rutgers. Built immersive XR interfaces for human-robot interaction in manufacturing (Future Manufacturing in Robotics grant). First author and co-author of several peer-reviewed papers presented at IEEE VR, ISMAR, and IGARSS, covering topics like bimanual VR interaction, ECS visualization in XR, and AR for geoscience data. Created a collaborative XR sand table for DARPA-funded military planning. Released MercuryMessaging 2.0, a Unity network/event handling library that doubled development speed for VR apps. Achieved 70% vulnerability detection accuracy in C code using NLP (Electra-based models) at Columbia's Software Systems Lab. Designed and conducted multiple user studies (totaling 60 participants) on VR/AR object manipulation Vice President, Student Alliance of CS (Rutgers): Spearheaded a 300+ student tech speaker series. President, Quantitative Finance Club: Led 14+ lectures and weekly interview prep sessions. Rutgers Enactus PM: Orchestrated outreach and support programs for veterans. Tutor at a women's correctional facility, contributing to education access and equity.

About

Benjamin Yang is a PhD candidate in Computer Science at Columbia University, advised by Professor Steven Feiner in the Computer Graphics and User Interfaces Lab. His research explores immersive 3D user interfaces at the intersection of XR, human-computer interaction, and machine learning. Ben has contributed to real-world systems in defense, robotics, and scientific visualization, including projects funded by DARPA and the NSF. He has also held technical roles at Amazon Alexa AI, AWS CodeGuru, and Datadog. With a multidisciplinary foundation and strong mentorship experience, Ben brings both research depth and practical insight to his work.

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