full-stack engineer · robotics enthusiastic

Yifan Hua

// Noni — if we’ve met

“create a world that never has been”

[ click something in the room ]

about

Reliability, usability, and efficiency are the qualities I care about most in any solution I build.

How I work - I’m good at turning ambiguous concepts into clear system diagrams, then building them into products that help people solve problems.

What I care about - The result has to hold up in real use.

education

Sep 2022 – Jun 2025 University of Toronto
Master of Engineering, Robotics Emphasis

Part-time.

Sep 2014 – Jun 2019 University of Alberta
BSc, Specialization in Computing Science

With Internship.

projects

photography

A few frames I'm glad I kept.

New York city scene

new york 00

New York city detail

new york 01

New York street scene

new york 02

Temple architecture

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Temple scene detail

temple 01

Temple architecture detail

temple 02

Drugstore sign and street detail

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Drugstore street detail

drugstore 01

Drugstore vertical street scene

drugstore 02

Waterbank landscape

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Waterbank scene detail

waterbank 01

Waterbank landscape detail

waterbank 02

Fireworks at night

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Fireworks detail at night

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Vertical fireworks at night

firework 02

Light and shadow study

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Light study detail

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Light and shadow detail

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Macau street scene

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Macau city detail

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Macau street detail

macau 02

more

A few things taking up good space in my life lately.

Photography noticing light and moments

I like slowing down to catch the small moments — check out my work by clicking the camera.

Cooking learning flavor by iteration

Food is one of the ways I stay close to people. I grew up with Chinese cooking, so that is my foundation, but I also like borrowing carefully from Japanese fish and beef techniques, Korean appetizer-making, French steak and lamb chops, and Italian pasta and sandwiches.

I also carry the Chinese tradition of 家宴: a home banquet for the family and friends closest to you. To me, it is one of the highest forms of hospitality, because the care is in the planning, the cooking, and the time everyone spends at the table.

Volunteering showing up for local culture

I spent a couple of years (2015-2017) volunteering with Edmonton's film and cultural festivals, including the Edmonton International Film Festival and Edmonton Italian Culture Festival. I liked being close to the energy of people gathering around stories, food, language, and place.


			

(psst — click the mug, or the "Welcome .." 5×)

robotics

Apr 2024 University of Toronto, Course Project

I implemented a sensor-to-cloud stack for body-temperature monitoring (BLE, Raspberry Pi, MQTT, MongoDB) using React/Node and Google Firestore, and added alert thresholds and a booking flow to close the loop from detection to care.

Apr 2023 University of Toronto, Course Project

I reproduced a published indoor navigation method and benchmarked multiple awareness policies (visibility, moving speed), including combined policies, using ROS and C++.

Dec 2021 – Apr 2022 University of Alberta
Research Intern

I spent this internship in the Reinforcement Learning & AI Lab, exploring async reinforcement learning workflows for Franka robot experiments: franka-async-rl↗.

Feb 2016 – Aug 2019 ARVP, University of Alberta
Software Developer → Team Lead

At Autonomous Robotic Vehicle Project↗, I worked on software for an underwater robot: the simulator everyone used for testing, object detection with histograms and a random forest classifier, camera calibration, Qt GUI work, and mission planning.

As team lead, I helped 20+ computer engineering/science students work together through GitHub, coding conventions, development process, and weekly scrum. I also taught GitHub workflows to 30+ engineering/science students and presented robotics content at the ROS Edmonton Meetup.

The team ranked 9th of 44 teams at RoboSub 2017↗ and later received 4th of 53 teams at RoboSub 2019↗.

experience

May 2019 – Present Intuit
Senior Software Developer
  • Sep 2023–now I am helping build the GenAI UX platform behind IntuitAssist↗
  • Aug 2022–Aug 2023 I worked on conversation experiences and an intent-based chatbot design tool
  • May 2019–Aug 2022 I helped shape the QuickBooks Online homepage and navigation experience
Sep 2017 – Aug 2018 AIMCo
Junior Data Specialist · Internship

I designed and built ORION, an overnight remediation system that automated data-integrity checks for next-day investment operations, replacing hours of manual work. At its core was a multi-threaded Python scheduler running 3000+ daily jobs, backed by a metadata database for later data-science analysis.

May 2017 – Aug 2017 WCB-Alberta
Summer Student Web Developer · Internship

First job! I built Payment Assistant, an internal web app that helped automate compensation filing workflows and supported 100+ weekly uses. The work took me across the React/Redux interface, Material UI components, ASP.NET APIs, and SQL queries.