Hi, i'm jackson

a shanghai student who builds robots, ships ai apps, and walks the city with a camera

Contact Me

THROUGH MY LENS

Three generations of Tibetan women in traditional dress seated in their home in western Sichuan

Edinburgh Castle rising above trees, framed by the Ross Fountain in the foreground

An orange cabin on a narrow spit of trees, reflected in the still water of a lake at dusk

A cone of colourful prayer flags on a snowy plateau above a frozen mountain valley

A star-filled night sky over snow-covered mountain ridges

The sun setting orange behind the Shanghai Tower in a hazy city skyline at dusk

Photography Portfolio

Jackson in safety glasses and an orange team shirt concentrating during a FIRST Robotics competition

Jackson looking out over snow-capped mountains from an autumn meadow

Jackson shooting with a Nikon camera during outdoor fieldwork

Jackson in a white cap and blue running shirt flashing a peace sign while running a marathon

About me

Contact Me

What I Do

01
Engineering & Robotics
Captain of my school's FIRST Robotics team — leading design, SolidWorks CAD, fabrication, and code, and taking the team to its first World Championship since 2017.
02
AI & Software
Building products at hackathons and beyond: Synapse, Scribe, and Nomad, plus an AI dermatology screening prototype using CNNs and Grad-CAM.
03
Economics & Data
Team leader at the International Economics Olympiad and National Economics Challenge; data science work in R at Wharton Global Youth; mathematical modeling at HiMCM.
04
Documentary & Story
Award-winning photographer and director of my school's graduation film; ethnographic fieldwork on elder care in western Sichuan; personal essays through the Iowa Young Writers' Studio.
05
Community
Weekly guide runner for visually impaired athletes, volunteer with the Oasis Meal Initiative, and founder-mentor of elementary robotics team 10120.

Projects

Robotics / Leadership

FRC Team Captain

World Championship qualifier

Led my school's FIRST Robotics team through design, CAD, fabrication, and code — our best season since 2017.

Jackson in an orange team shirt and safety glasses talking strategy with a teammate at a FIRST Robotics competition

Jackson kneeling in the workshop adjusting the arm mechanism of the FRC robot

The full FIRST Robotics team posing with the competition robot behind a 6487 banner

Co-Founder & Developer

Scribe

An AI learning workspace that turns source materials into flashcards, study guides, worksheets, audio review, and mind maps — grew to 4K+ users and ~US$300/month in revenue; the team continues to ship features and maintain the product.

Visit scribe.study

Scribe's how-it-works cards: upload your materials, Scribe builds the session, study then ask

Scribe homepage showing a guided biochemistry study session with readings, quizzes, and flashcards

Platform Builder & Researcher

Metropolitan Trails

Built a platform where students design and publish their own walking trails through Shanghai, each telling the city's stories through a different lens, from gender and public space to colonial history, with routes, field photography, and narratives. Studied urban theory (Lynch, de Certeau, Jacobs, Smithson) and Metropolitan Trails Academy methods; documented across field walks.

Explore the map

The Metropolitan Trails platform — an illustrated Shanghai map with four colour-coded walking trails and their numbered stops

Aerial view of the Oriental Pearl Tower rising over the Huangpu River and the Shanghai skyline

Economics / Finance Track

S.-T. Yau High School Science Award

First Author

Built a Power Constraint Index (11 indicators, 4 dimensions, AHM–CRITIC coupled weights) for 51 U.S. state-level jurisdictions, 2013–2025, merging EIA, BEA, BLS, Census, IPEDS, and U.S. Drought Monitor data. Estimated fixed-effects PPML models across three periods: a 1-SD rise in electricity constraints is associated with 6.9% fewer data-processing establishments, and the association strengthens from −2.1% (2014–19, not significant) to −17.0% (2024–25); broadband and cloud-provider presence weaken it. Applied bias-corrected VRS-SBM / Super-SBM efficiency analysis, finding employment (29%) and payroll (49%) gaps far larger than establishment gaps — so regions should judge data-center growth by jobs and wages, not facility counts.

Read the paper