Brian Hou
Education
University of California, Berkeley
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 3.835 GPA
brianhou.com
brian.hou@berkeley.edu
(expected) 2012-2016
Research Experience
UC Berkeley Automation Sciences Lab (Advisor: Ken Goldberg)
01/2015 - present
Working on robust grasp planning, studying scaling effects with multi-armed bandit models with correlated
rewards. Was a primary developer of a pipeline that utilized the Google Cloud Platform to parallelize grasp
quality analysis for over 2.5 million grasps, reducing runtime by more than three orders of magnitude.
Publications
Dex-Net 1.0: A Cloud-Based Network of 3D Objects for Robust Grasp Planning Using a Multi-Armed
Bandit Model with Correlated Rewards
Jeffrey Mahler, Florian T. Pokorny, Brian Hou, Melrose Roderick, Michael Laskey, Mathieu Aubry, Kai Kohlhoff, Torsten Kroeger, James Kuffner, Ken Goldberg.
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2016 (under review)
Problems Before Solutions: Automated Problem Clarification at Scale
Soumya Basu, Albert Wu, Brian Hou, John DeNero.
ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale (L@S), 2015
Teaching Experience (brianhou.com/ta_ratings)
CS 61A (SICP)
Summer 2013, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015
•Head of Infrastructure. With head TA, managing over 70 TAs/tutors who collectively teach 1,300 students.
•Developed a new project to introduce topics in machine learning, with fellow TA Marvin Zhang and Prof.
John DeNero. To appear as part of the Nifty Assignments Panel at SIGCSE 2016.
•Helped develop autograder for automated feedback on problem understanding and solution correctness.
•Wrote additional material (weekly quizzes, practice midterm) to provide students with more exam practice.
•Interviewed candidates for Summer 2015 and Fall 2015 TA positions.
•Guest lectured about data abstraction and implementing a custom object-oriented programming language.
CS 188 (Introduction to Artificial Intelligence)
Summer 2014
•Led discussion sections for the first summer offering of Berkeley’s AI course. Helped write and grade exams,
hold office hours, answer questions on forum, and managed course materials on edX.
Leadership Experience
Executive Officer at Eta Kappa Nu, Mu Chapter
May 2014 - December 2015
•Oversaw the Mu Chapter’s activities and helped manage over 30 officers and 60 candidates each semester.
•Worked closely with EECS department to organize six student-faculty lunches in one semester.
•Presented student survey results at EECS faculty retreat, highlighting topics such as stress and mental
health, academic dishonesty, and student-faculty relations with other student group leaders.
•Coordinated course evaluations for all 81 EECS classes, surveying a total of over 8,000 students.
•Led department tours for prospective undergraduates, as well as middle school and high school students.
Awards
UC Berkeley EECS Honors Degree Program (Fall 2014-present)
UC Berkeley Eta Kappa Nu (Fall 2013-present)
UC Berkeley College of Engineering Dean’s Honors List (Spring 2013)
UC Berkeley Regents’ and Chancellor’s Scholar (2012-present)
National Merit Scholarship Winner (2012)