What's This?
These projects show the range of systems I like building: full-stack applications, AI workflows, data dashboards, automated content platforms, and lower-level storage infrastructure. I update this page as projects evolve. If you have questions, email me at kevin.you@mail.utoronto.ca.
1-on-1 - Event Planner Application
Node.js, Express.js, Django REST Framework, WebSocket, Socket.IO
- Engineered a microservices backend with Node.js and Express.js, reducing average API response latency from 400ms to 300ms and supporting 200+ concurrent users during peak event planning.
- Designed a scalable RESTful API with Django REST Framework, cutting critical data retrieval time from 300ms to 210ms for user event queries.
- Implemented real-time chat with WebSocket and Socket.IO, achieving message delivery latency under 100ms and a 20% improvement over the first prototype.
HotSpot - Residential Application
React, CSS, D3.js, Plotly.js, GitHub Collaboration
- Contributed to a group project with TD Management Data and Analytics Lab and received Best Visualization Award in UofT's DataFest.
- Built an interactive full-stack dashboard for commercial lease transaction data, enabling users to explore 10,000+ historical data points with filters and live visual updates.
- Developed reusable React visualization components that improved user engagement by 30%.
Younee AI - Personalized Outfit Recommendation Engine
Java, Spring Boot, React, MySQL, GLM-4-Flash
- Engineered a full-stack application that provided personalized outfit recommendations to 500+ users by analyzing style preferences, weather, and fashion trends.
- Developed RESTful APIs with Spring Boot, reducing average API response latency to less than 200ms while managing 1,000+ user profiles and outfit records in MySQL.
- Integrated GLM-4-Flash into the recommendation engine, improving suggestion relevance by 25% based on user feedback metrics.
TDS News AI Journalist - Automated Content Generation System
Python, BeautifulSoup, Django REST Framework, GPT-4, Docker
- Engineered a scraping pipeline with BeautifulSoup to collect and structure news from 50+ sources, building a curated dataset of 1,000+ articles and press releases.
- Developed an AI journalist agent using GPT-4 to automate article generation from collected data.
- Designed 10+ scalable RESTful API endpoints with Django REST Framework for frontend integration and automated publishing workflows.
- Containerized the application with Docker to keep development and deployment environments consistent across the team.
National Pollutant Release Inventory Visual Report
HTML, CSS, JavaScript, R, Shiny, Shinyapps.io
- Developed a full-stack interactive web platform to host and communicate environmental data analytics.
- Built and deployed an R Shiny facility map that lets users explore emissions for 100+ toxic substances across 200+ facilities and all Canadian provinces.
- Transformed Canadian National Pollutant Release Inventory data into actionable visual insights for policymakers and the public.
MimicDB - High-Performance Key-Value Store
C++, LSM Tree, AVL Tree, B-tree Indexes, Bloom Filters
- Architected a scalable LSM-tree-based key-value store, using an AVL tree for in-memory operations and B-tree indexes for on-disk SSTables to boost query throughput by 60% over binary search.
- Designed a 10MB buffer pool with a custom hash map and integrated Bloom filters to reduce unnecessary disk I/O.
- Built and benchmarked the system with Makefile, reaching 1,700 ops/sec for updates and 800 ops/sec for searches through optimized compaction policies.
SDG Data Visualization Dashboard
Python, Streamlit, Plotly, Pandas
- Developed a Streamlit application to visualize UN SDG indicators with four analytical tabs: Map, Trend, Comparison, and Data.
- Won Best Visualization Award in UTSC's SDG Challenge Competition.
- Used Plotly to build animated choropleth maps and interactive charts, handling datasets with 50,000+ records without performance degradation.
- Implemented a Pandas data layer for ETL, aggregation, and filtering across goals, targets, indicators, and time periods.