Welcome to Wenhao’s Homepage!
About me
I am currently a master’s student at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), pursuing my passion for robotics. I completed my bachelor’s degree in Mechanical and Automation Engineering at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). During my third year, I had the opportunity to exchange to the University of Toronto for a semester. In the subsequent summer, I conducted research at the UTIAS Lab under the guidance of Prof. Jonathan Kelly, investigating certifiable multi-sensor calibration optimization. Additionally, I worked on my final year project on MAV Topological Sparse Graph Generation, supervised by Prof. Chen Benmei.
Hobbies
One of my favorite activities is playing Mafia (The Werewolves of Millers Hollow, 狼人杀). I view it not merely as a logic game but as a psychological and dramatic performance. Logic is just one avenue to persuade (or “influence”, or perhaps, “c-h-e-a-t”) others; there are many other aspects to explore within the game, such as different players, game settings, and the intricacies of psychology. The brilliance of this game lies in the psychological warfare.
I fell in love with Poker after learning probability and statistics. I realized this game is not about gambling, but about self-discipling.
Why me?
Curiosity
I have an insatiable thirst for “useless” knowledge—knowledge that may not directly relate to grades, work, or utilitarian efforts, such as philosophy and the history of science—because learning purely for the sake of learning brings me immense happiness. That might be called curiosity. Bertrand Russell is my idol in this regard. I enjoy studying the underlying logic and mechanisms behind complex systems and explain them in a easy way. I tried to figure it out in the graduate school application and I concluded it into advices for future applicants at CUHK. See Graduate Application for CUHKer.
Here is my booklist about philosophy, economics, psychology, science, fictions, and so on.
Intolerance
I cannot tolerate repetition, inefficiency, and disorder.
Whenever I find myself repeating a task for more than three times, I will start exploring the automated solutions. For example, when holding the tournament, I generated the certificates of participation for over 100 debaters by Python. I am always open to new technology to increase the efficiency.
Wasting time is painful for me. If I begin to await the end of something, I will question myself whether I am doing the meaningful things.
I meticulously organize the materials I am responsible for, in club operations, company management processes, or coding.
Driven by my intolerance, I strive to transform repetitive, inefficient, and chaotic tasks into processes that are streamlined, standardized, and automated.
How to explain it to you
I like asking why. So I know how to explain complex things clearly and simply. See my blog: 怎么解释你才懂.
Self-motivation
I enjoy self-learning more than taking lectures in school. Actually, I took less than 20% lectures in the third and fourth year of undergraduate but still retain a good grade. Bilibili and YouTube are always great teachers. Now, ChatGPT is a better teacher.
Communication
My experience in the debate team taught me a lot about communication skills. In the minds of many, debate is defensive or aggressive talk and is considered an inefficient, consensus-eluding form of communication. However, debate is actually a way to persuade the audience (not the opponents) by clashing with the opposing stance. It can be seen as another form of presentation. Debate training teaches me the technics of verbal sparring. But once you master the bad habits, you naturally understand what is a good communication, and how to “Seek common ground while reserve differences” — just do the opposite of sparring.
People with same stands often have different view points and argumentative logic, while those with different positions often share common criteria for judgment. I don’t care about what the stand is; I care about whether the stand arises from rigorous reasoning, rather than ‘feeling’.
I valued this experience, as well as the logical training it provides.
INTJ
Very close to ENTJ, but very far from INFJ. I bet T is 99%.
Here is my T zone: https://medium.com/@haostarrr