Greetings. I’m Youwen. I study math and hack on computers at UC Santa Barbara.
I’m a member of the MIT OpenCompute Laboratory and benevolent dictator at functor.systems.
Here is my GitHub, university transcript, CV/resume, and a picture of my cats.
I am interested in the nPOV and how we can apply higher structures to solve hard problems. In general, I prefer to use free-as-in-freedom software. I developed functorOS, an experimental NixOS-based Linux distribution—among other free software contributions.
I occasionally attend hackathons for fun. Most recently, I won the grand prize at HackMIT 2025. This year I am organizing SB Hacks, the headliner hackathon of UC Santa Barbara.
In my spare time, I play guitar and spend too much money on guitar pedals. I listen to a lot of music.
See about for more about myself, or now for what I’m up to right now. Or explore the other pages on this website.
Do not worry too much about your difficulty in mathematics, I can assure you that mine are still greater.
— Albert Einstein
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Photos
I recently won a Nikon D7500 DSLR at HackMIT so hopefully I’ll be posting more in the near future!
Moon over the Pacific, Santa Barbara
Sunset over UC Berkeley
Mission Peak, Newark, California
Contact
Places
University of California, Santa Barbara
University of California, Santa Barbara