Maokai L.
About Maokai L.
Maokai L. is the Co-Founder and CTO of Smarking Inc., where he manages the integration and sharding of data systems for machine learning tasks. He holds a PhD in Applied Math/Operations Research from MIT and has a strong background in data science and engineering.
Work at Smarking
Maokai L. serves as the Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Smarking Inc., a position he has held since 2015. Based in San Francisco, CA, he has been instrumental in developing innovative solutions for the parking industry. His leadership has guided the engineering team in implementing advanced systems, such as anomaly detection with high precision and recall rates. He has also led significant technology migrations, including the transition of the business intelligence dashboard to a more modern tech stack.
Education and Expertise
Maokai L. has a strong academic background in engineering and operations research. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from Tsinghua University from 2003 to 2007. He then pursued a Master of Science in Computation for Design and Optimization at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2007 to 2009. He completed his education with a PhD in Applied Mathematics and Operations Research at MIT from 2009 to 2014. His education has equipped him with expertise in data science, machine learning, and optimization.
Technical Contributions
Maokai L. has made significant technical contributions in various roles. He managed the integration and sharding of Airflow and ECS for ETL and machine learning tasks, achieving the capability to run over 1,000 machine learning tasks per hour in production. He built a dynamic pricing engine using TensorFlow, optimizing over 8,000 price points per location per hour, which resulted in a notable increase in online revenue. Additionally, he integrated AWS X-Ray for improved monitoring and debugging of distributed systems.
Previous Work Experience
Before co-founding Smarking, Maokai L. gained valuable experience in the tech industry. He worked as a Data Scientist at Facebook for two months in 2013 in Menlo Park, CA. Additionally, he served as a Summer Associate at Morgan Stanley for two months in 2011 in New York City. These roles provided him with insights into data analytics and financial services, contributing to his overall expertise.
Achievements
Maokai L. has achieved recognition in various domains. He was a champion in the MIT Poker Bot Competition, showcasing his skills in algorithm design and strategy. He also won a National Olympiad Medal, reflecting his strong analytical abilities. In addition, he mentored a PhD candidate in developing a recurrent neural network model that significantly improved predictive analytics accuracy for under-performing locations.