Hi, I'm Raina Song.A

passionate

tech lover who’s

motivated

to make

positive impacts

ResumeGraphics Design

I'm Raina Song, a first-year Master's student in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. I graduated from the University of Auckland with a double Bachelor's degree in Software Engineering & Finance. Last year, I did my study abroad exchange program at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) from January to June, and following that, I interned at Apple on the Creativity Apps team as a Software Engineer Intern from June to September!

I have a wide range of interests, to get to know me, have a look at what I'm passionate about! I'm constantly looking for opportunities in the fields I'm interested in, either as a developer, researcher, designer or innovator, because ⸺

My life is empowered by what I love

Click on one of the cards or scroll down to view details :)
ResearchI am fascinated by the rapid development of emerging technologies and their potential to change the world. I am interested in the research behind these technologies and how they can be applied to solve real-world problems. My current research explores multiple aspects of Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, Human-Computer Interaction, and Blockchain/Decentralized Technologies. I am passionate about human-AI co-creation and collaboration, as well as augmenting human creativity by using AI to bridge diverse cultures and drive positive changes.
Summer Research Scholarship ProjectUniversity of Auckland, Dec - Feb 2023

Project Title: AI for Dream Analysis: A Novel Approach to Psychotherapy

Supervisor: Dr. Johnny Chan

Details: Contemporary psychological approaches to dream analysis predominantly rely on patient narratives, employing textual representations as a means to deconstruct, associate, and analyse the underlying psychological elements within dreams. However, textual mediums may lack the intuitive depth found in visual formats, potentially leading to discrepancies between the therapist's interpretation and the patient's dream experiences. Therefore, this project proposes an AI application to visually represent dreams, and allow real-time adjustments to better assist therapists and patients in psychotherapy sessoins, and improve patient's mental health and sleep quality.

My Contributions: Developed a multimodal machine learning framework that includes natural language processing, emotion detection (sentiment analysis) and image generation. Textual input can be analysed by the emotion detection layer and images are generated with emotional colours or themes to represent dreams.

dream-analysisdream-analysis
Final Year Dissertation ProjectUniversity of Auckland, Mar - Nov 2022

Project Title: Learning By Teaching: Investigating the Creation and Benefits of an AI Student Using Object-Oriented Programming as a Case Study

Supervisor: Dr. Nasser Giacaman

Details: The aim of this research is to enhance smart education by introducing the concept of an “AI Student”, a bot that aims to communicate and support human students in a natural and conversational manner, act as their peers, and effectively facilitate their understanding of difficult concepts. The research utilizes the well-known pedagogy concept of "Learning by Teaching", and aims to provide an accessible way for students to use such a method to enhance the effectiveness of learning. Students are required to speak aloud to the AI Student, and an interactive 3D avatar was developed to simulate realistic peer tutoring scenarios. This project uniquely contributed to the field of AI before the surge of ChatGPT by developing each component of the AI Student from scratch, and the results from the user experiment proved the effectiveness of the AI Student. This project was awarded the Best Project in Category Award by industry judges from EY.

My Contributions: Proposed the project idea through a series of literature reviews and research. Developed a full-stack web application platform that allows students to interact with the virtual AI student. Constructed a multimodal machine learning framework and integrated Azure Cognitive Services. Created a smart chatbot that learns to generate relevant questions to students’ inputs and assists students in learning and understanding difficult programming concepts. Conducted user studies with over 120 undergraduate students and collected data to evaluate the effectiveness of the application both quantitatively and qualitatively.

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Advanced Human-Computer Interaction Course ProjectUniversity of Auckland, Jul - Nov 2022

Project Title: Investigating the Impact Machine Emotion Classification Uncertainty Displays Have on the Human Decision Making Process

Supervisor: Dr. Danielle Lottridge

Details: There have been very few studies that evaluate the computer's ability to generate emotion classification information in an attempt to help the user make decisions or perform tasks. This is a crucial area to explore as it is paramount to the two-way communication between humans and computers. This research conducted experiments to investigate the impact of different uncertainty information displays of emotion classification on the human decision-making process. The results show that there is a correlation between the level of uncertainty information displays and human confidence in making decisions. Human participants agreed with most emotion classifications, but some incorrect classifications could influence human decisions. The project was top in the class, and I was awarded the First in Course Award for this course.

My Contributions: Conducted literature review and consolidated the research directions, designed the details of user study and experiments, and contributed to the development of machine-generated emotive stories. Performed quantitative and qualitative analysis of experiment results and created visualizations for the evaluation outcome.

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AI-augmented Creative Writing and Idea Generation on Smart GlassesNational University of Singapore HCI Lab, Nov 2022 - Mar 2023

Supervisor: Prof. Shengdong Zhao

Details: This project aimed to explore the potential of AI in augmenting creative idea generation by utilizing mixed reality technologies. The critical contribution of this research is to immerse AI in users’ daily activities and stimulate them to produce creative content based on their interactions with the outside world. The results validated that such an application with the flexibility to alternate between representations of information can meaningfully catalyse creative idea generation. Moreover, the use of mixed reality allows users to gain contextual information and inspiration from the real world while allowing multitasking at the same time.

My Contributions: Developed an NLP framework that creates multiple levels of structured information from audio input through smart glasses in real time. Constructed the main architecture of the framework and built data visualisations using Apache Echarts by extracting keywords from audio transcription, clustering based on semantic associations and rendering on smart glasses.

nus hci project
Decentralized Technology Research ProjectUniversity of Auckland, Mar 2022 - Mar 2023

Project Title: Decentralised Technology Adoption with a Coopetition Approach

Supervisor: Dr. Johnny Chan

Details: Decentralized technologies like blockchain have gained popularity recently due to their reliable, transparent, open, immutable, and secured natures. However, barriers such as lack of government regulation, lack of trust, lack of skilled workforce, high technological complexity and high costs stop many organisations and industries from adopting them. Decentralized technology adoption is especially challenging in the primary industry, which relies mainly on traditional communication and data management methods. This paper contributes by demonstrating how the coopetition relationship could drive the decentralized technology adoption across an industry, and the opportunities and challenges of this adoption approach on the stakeholders and wider communities. The article was published and presented in IEEE CSDE 2023.

My Contributions: Conducted literature review and collected data through interviews for evaluation of the case study. Proposed the coopetition approach in adopting decentralized technology in New Zealand's traditional primary industry. The main author of the article contributed 90% of the writing.

View full paper
DevelopCoding has always been one of my favourite things, I love to develop engaging, user-friendly and well-designed applications to bring convenience to people's life. I gained various skills through multiple individual or group projects throughout my time at uni.

Engineering Faculty Final Year Capstone Project Testing Platform

At the beginning of this year, I independently developed the testing platform for the Engineering Faculty Capstone Project. The platform is built with React, NodeJS, Express and MongoDB. It is currently used by Engineering students across three specialisations (Software, Computer System, and Electrical) to test their capstone projects. The 2023 Capstone project asks students across three specialisations to simulate a Vet Clinic where they create scales to weigh animals, and a web app to manage the clinic. The testing platform allows students to test their web app and scales by sending requests to the backend server and receiving responses. The platform also provides a user-friendly interface for students to view their test results and compare them with the expected results.

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In 2022, I developed this web app with 20 engineering students with different levels of technical skills as a team. I was the team leader, UI/UX designer and developer in this project. Throughout the project, besides technical tasks, I conducted sprint planning, stand-up meetings, sub-team leader meetings and various management tasks following Agile practices. This app "Forgettable" aims to help people remember their encounters in networking settings.

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REVO

revo logo

This project was developed as a team of 3 in 2021. It is a Java-based Android application that aims to showcase vinyl records in popular categories and allow users to favourite, search and view details of the record items. We used a popular music API as a data source to retrieve and update data in real time. This project was awarded 2nd place in the competition with 33 teams. You can find out more in the showcase video below.

revo-projectWatch the full demo video here
DesignDesign is another way for me to express my creativity. I love to create designs that are attractive and innovative. I have been a designer for multiple organizations and projects, designing posters, social media posts, UI/UX designs (web and mobile), logo and brand designs, and more.View full design portfolio
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Cognitive Science & PsychologyCognitive science and psychology are fascinating fields that I am interested in. I love to learn about how the brain works and how people think and behave. Combining my knowledge of computer science and these two fields, I found many interesting research questions.I am currently working on a research project that aims to enhance undergraduate course learning and teaching experiences by using large language models and multimodal machine learning. This project is unique as it aims to analyse the sentiment of the user (either the learner or the instructor) through textual responses, and personalize learning or teaching experiences.Besides, during my study abroad exchange at UCSD, I took a course called Learning, Memory, and Attention which I was fascinated by. I am also interested in the psychology of human creativity and how to enhance human cognitive functions such as learning, memory and attention through AI. I am constantly looking for opportunities to explore these fields.
Photography & Film-makingView my photography portfolioIf I would choose a thing to do in my free time, the first thing that comes to my mind is to take my camera and capture the beauty of the world! My favourite genre is street photography, I love to capture human activities and emotions in the city. I also love to take photos of nature and animals!
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Sometimes, static photos cannot capture a place's sounds, smells and feelings. Thus, I also love to make short films and find editing videos a great way to relax.This year, during my exchange at UCSD, I joined the Triton Television Club as a film-making intern. I recently completed my first short film, which I made with a "non-human" (an AI program)! short-filmWatch the full film here
Languages & CulturesLearning new languages is one of my favourite hobbies. I speak English and Mandarin, self-taught Korean and Japanese, and am currently learning French. I am also passionate about learning about different cultures and traditions while learning their languages.In 2019, I was selected as one of the 20 student volunteers from New Zealand to participate in the Japan Empowerment Program. We travelled to Japan for ten days and went to local Japanese high schools to empower Japanese high school students to be more confident about the future and help them to improve their critical thinking and problem-solving skills. We discovered differences between New Zealand and Japan, and gained skills in both languages and cultures.Besides that, I have also volunteered at Korean Cultural Day, where I used Korean to help participants learn about Korean culture and traditions. In addition, I love to make connections between human languages and computer languages, and investigate the syntax and semantics of different languages.
MusicMusic has been a part of my life since I was a child. I started learning piano when I was three years old, and I have played the piano for ten years. I also played the clarinet for four years. Besides, I joined the choir for around six years since 3rd grade in elementary school. Music enriches my life and has always been my passion.Because of my passion for music, I have always been looking for opportunities that can combine music with my skills in software engineering. In 2022, I joined Serato as a software engineer intern, and worked on their flagship music production software Serato Studio. I was excited to develop a software that musicians around the world can use to create music!photography
Space & Fundamental QuestionsIn my free time, I love to think about the origin of life and the purpose of the human race. I love watching science fiction movies, especially those related to space. Watching stars and the sky at night can always release my stress and relax me.In 2021, as a team of 8 students, we won first place in the Auckland Program for Space Systems. We designed a CubeSat satellite that can be used to perform medical experiments in space to enhance the research of cancer cures. We call ourselves CURES, and the team is currently working on building the actual satellite and launch to space in upcoming years. The CEO of Rocket Lab, Peter Beck, awarded us the prize. Watch the video below to learn more about our project.This year in 2023, I joined the Rocket Propulsion Lab at UCSD during my exchange semester. I work as a software developer on the team, and we are currently working on a portable solution for controlling and recording rocket launches remotely.
The FuturePersonal DevelopmentI am a curious person, and I love to learn new things. I am always looking for opportunities to challenge myself and improve my skills. Luckily, I am also a fast learner. I enjoy self-teaching skills in both computer science and other fields, such as music, language, design, photography, and literally anything!Positive ImpactsI care about the future and I am passionate about creating positive impacts in the world and constantly seek opportunities to do so. I enjoy working as a volunteer, especially in the field of STEM education and the UN SDGs.This year is my 4th year as a volunteer in the Women in Engineering Network (WEN) student organization at UoA, I am currently the chair of the marketing team, aiming to promote STEM and Engineering to more high school self-identified female students and their parents. I was also a volunteer for the UNYouth Auckland organization, where I applied my skills in photography and delivered high-quality event photos for participants.As a software engineer, I am excited to work on projects that can make a positive impact on the planet, it is my life goal to make the world a better place!