Michael Lan

I am a student at UCLA, where I am pursuing my bachelor's in computer science along with a minor in philosophy. I enjoy thinking about functional programming and formal methods. My academic background involves coursework in compilers, programming language theory, and type theory. In the past, I've contributed to mechanized Rocq proofs of certain quantum computing results. I also enjoy building open source developer tools.

My future, however, is oriented toward industry, but involving functional programming where possible. I've interned at Pure Storage (now known as Everpure). More recently, I interned at Tesla, where I wrote Haskell; and at Jane Street, where I wrote OCaml. After graduation I will be joining Jane Street full-time as a software engineer.

My hobbies include philosophy, karaoke, poker, guitar, and crosswords. I also have a board game collection which rarely sees the light of day. I also care a lot about the particular tools I use. Though I used Neovim for a number of years, I have since switched to Emacs. I also use and love: Kitty, a terminal emulator; Kagi, a search engine; Typst, a typesetting engine; and Jujutsu, a version control frontend. Try them out! These days, I occasionally write code and even less frequently make videos.

I'd love to talk with you about anything! Reach me at michaellan AT ucla DOT edu.