ABOUT
ME,
AKI (Fengkai)
LIU.
This fall I am taking ML systems for efficient AI, numerical analysis, linear optimization, microeconomic theory, and writing for computer science.
I am doing ML systems research in Prof. Sreepathi Pai's group on GPU kernel autotuning, maintaining LLM Quant Profiler, and continuing to reshape this site.
My technical attention is on AI infrastructure, ML systems, efficient inference, quantization, and the less visible systems problems behind modern AI.
At the same time, I am reading systems papers, theory, criticism, and books around aesthetics, psychoanalysis, perception, and technology.
I have also been paying attention to visual computing, spatial computing, edge/cloud collaboration, heterogeneous computing, platforms, clothing, scent, music, and everyday interfaces.
Some of this turns into fragments for Text Lab; some of it belongs more to a loose map of influences.
It's hard for me to
introduce myself.
I'm Aki (刘丰恺), studying Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at the University of Rochester. I graduate in December 2026.
I grew up in Shanghai. When I started university, I was studying East Asian Studies and Digital Media Studies. After some time exploring, I switched to CS and Applied Math. It was a sharp turn, but I'm proud I made it.
I care about AI infrastructure, ML systems, efficient AI, and the underlying system issues when models actually run. Rather than just viewing AI as a product, concept, or trend, I want to understand its place in real systems. My background in human-computer interaction, design, and full-stack development also makes me care about how systems are presented, used, and ultimately enter human experience. Furthermore, I continue to follow visual computing, spatial computing, cloud-edge collaboration, edge computing, and heterogeneous computing, as they all point to new forms of computing in the relationships between devices, spaces, hardware, and interaction.
I have a long-standing interest in how perception, space, form, and bodily experience record the conditions of contemporary life. I have a strong, fundamental interest in language, imagery, platforms, music, scents, clothing, interfaces, and subcultures. I also care about experiences that are harder to stably categorize: drifting, disorder, boundaries, marginal situations, negativity, and limits. More than my technical skills, I believe my writing and creations represent me better.
My experience itself is also hard to fit into a single narrative. I am from China, originally from a rural area, grew up in Shanghai, and am now studying in the US. I am not a traditional liberal arts or STEM student. I don't fully belong to any side, but perhaps it is exactly this unstable position that makes it easier for me to observe structures and more sensitive to how people live within them.
If I have one relatively stable ability, it is probably this: sorting a vague mass of things into categories, building frameworks, and finding their internal structure. I am working hard to express this ability and translate it into more concrete things: projects, essays, notes, interfaces, research directions, or some clearer personal language.
This site is where I organize these things. It is not just a portfolio, nor is it an over-packaged personal brand. It is more like a continuously generating space, used to record how I understand technology, culture, systems, and myself.
Symptom!