Charles Yang - About

Hi, I’m Charles Yang! Welcome to my little island floating out in the vast internet!

I’m trying to structure my thoughts more coherently by writing more - follow along for the journey if you want!

Currently working on:

• ministering to the youth at Grace Chinese Baptist Church of Richmond (GCBCR)
• Masters of Theological Studies seminary student at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary
• ML Engineer at SambaNova Systems. SambaNova Systems is a startup that is bringing a new AI accelerator to market. We recently finished raising a \$670M Series D, with a \$5B valuation.
• Research Consultant at Actuate focusing on carbon dioxide removal. Actuate is a new type of innovation non-profit, founded by ex-DARPA managers
• Co-host of the OpenAir Collective show CDR Horizons, a seminar series covering the cutting edge of carbon removal research
• Part of the Interact and Reboot communities, among others.

Currently thinking about:

• How to encourage right-to-repair and battery recycling
• phytomining(ARPA-E RFI Response), biomass-based carbon sequestration and hydrogen generation, and mass timber
• The insane technology/cultural adoption curves necessary to fight climate change, spanning from building codes to carbon dioxide removal to transmission planning to bike lanes
• What I like and don’t like about progress studies/effective altruism (having spent my 2020 Summer doing the Oxford EA In-depth Fellowship)
• How to form a more perfect union. And a more perfect commonwealth of Virginia
• Trying to understand supply chains and the modern financial economy
• political economy and state capacity

Previously working on:

• I was an ARPA-E Tech-to-Market Summer Fellow during Summer 2021, working on AI and Quantum Computing for energy applications. I wrote a brief post about my time at ARPA-E and examples of path criticality in quantun computing
• My 5th year masters at UC Berkeley in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) department in Spring 2021, focusing on robust and secure AI. You can find my thesis on defenses for AI security here.
• I recently published two policy papers: one with CSET@Georgetown on AI for science and another with DayOneProject on how to decarbonize the power grid.
• Mostly exited academia, but you can find my old publications here. I collaborated the most with Grace Gu, a mechanical engineering professor at UC Berkeley, and the Ravi Prasher group at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in the Energy Technologies Area. In both cases, I was applying artificial intelligence models to different scientific applications.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.

Last updated: 08/15/2022