I'm Ho Lok, a CS + Linguistics student at UCLA and a student software developer at UCLA Digital and Technology Solutions. Previously a Stanford research intern and a NASA L'SPACE project manager. I'm an eight-time hackathon prize winner, a USA Team Handball Academic All-American, and I play for the UCLA Rugby team.
Where I've studied, researched, and competed
32-second intro · has sound
One dot becomes 2,400, the number of pins on the Dot Pad tactile display that TouchSpace drives. The same points then re-form into what I work on: a speech waveform, a floor plan with a route through it, and a handball goal.
A few numbers that sum up the last few years.
Prizes include Anthropic's Claude for Public Benefit Prize at Cal Hacks 13.0, 1st Place at the Columbia University Hackathon, 2nd Place at UC Berkeley Hack for Impact, Best Student Life Hack at SB Hacks XI, and 3rd Place at De Anza Hacks 2.5. Also a finalist at HackHarvard and HackMIT.
Four hackathon prize winners. Pick one to see what it does.
Hackathon · Cal Hacks 13.0 · 2026
Scan a room with a LiDAR iPhone and TouchSpace turns it into a floor plan and walkable navigation graph that rises as pins on a 2,400-pin Dot Pad tactile display. Ask a question out loud and Claude works out what you mean; the answer comes from the real map data and Dijkstra route planning computes every path, so the AI can never make one up. A FastAPI backend with 20 endpoints and 153 automated tests powers the React web app. Built with James Zheng and Sunghyuk Yoon.
My part: the FastAPI backend, the React web app, the map schema and floor-plan processing, RoomPlan import, Dijkstra routing, the Claude question interpreter, the route editor, and the 60×40 Dot Pad preview. James built the Bluetooth Dot Pad driver. On AI: Claude only interprets the question; every answer and route comes from deterministic map functions, and the 153 tests cover all 20 endpoints.
Claude for Public Benefit Prize · $5K from Anthropic
Hackathon · SB Hacks XI · 2025
naccent transcribes your speech with the OpenAI Whisper API and scores it sound by sound through SpeechAce and a Flask service, so you can see how each sound compares with a native speaker. The Next.js frontend tracks your progress over time.
My part: I built the Whisper transcription and SpeechAce scoring pipeline behind the Flask service and shipped the Next.js frontend with Chart.js progress charts, after replacing a first version that scored with an LLM alone and handled accents and phonetic detail poorly.
Best Student Life Hack
Hackathon · Columbia University · 2024
GreenMate runs on Snap Spectacles and overlays real-time plant-health data in the wearer's view, so you can see what a plant needs just by looking at it.
My part: I built the Spectacles app in Lens Studio.
1st Place
View on DoraHacks
Hackathon · UC Berkeley Hack for Impact · 2024
An AI assistant that recognizes the people around you and recalls how you know them, to make in-person conversations easier. My first hackathon win, at an event hosted by Cal Hacks.
2nd Place Overall
View on GitHub
UCLA Digital and Technology Solutions · Digital Spaces · Los Angeles
UCLA Center for Excellence in Engineering and Diversity · Los Angeles
De Anza College · Cupertino
NASA L'SPACE Academy · Tempe, AZ
Stanford University · Palo Alto
Hang Seng Bank · Hong Kong
Graduating July 2027
B.S. Computer Science and Linguistics (Honors)
Technical skills
Off the screen
Team handball is one of the fastest-growing sports in the U.S. and a featured sport at the LA 2028 Olympics. I've been selected to represent both Hong Kong and the USA.
“What is Handball? America's Next Great Sport” · USA Team Handball
Building TouchSpace in San Francisco with James Zheng and Sunghyuk Yoon. It won Anthropic's Claude for Public Benefit Prize.
React, Next.js, TypeScript, Node.js, FastAPI, Flask, and MongoDB on the web. C++, C, and x86 assembly when I need to get closer to the hardware.
Studying CS and linguistics means I care about how people actually talk. naccent turns speech recognition into feedback a learner can use.
At Stanford I built a grid-based evolutionary simulator in Python and was first author of the paper on it, which showed populations re-adapting after their survival zone moved.
I led a 20-person team at NASA L'SPACE, and I've spent years on handball and rugby teams where everyone has a role.
I'm always happy to talk about SWE and research roles, hackathons, or handball. Reach me at holokcheung@ucla.edu.
