Wenqi He

Employment

National Center for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Research Software Engineer, Visual Analytics, 2024 – present
Graduate Research Assistant, 2022 – 2023

Simple NetInt (Illinois Computes) — Interactive multi-layer 3D variable-scale map in WebGL for environmental, epidemiological, and economic data for the Brazilian Amazon. Implemented real-time non-linear geospatial feature transformations in GLSL shaders with GPU-based hit detection via asynchronous PBO readback and CPU-based raycasting.

WormFindr (NIH WormAtlas) — WebGL-based visualisation tool for the C. elegans neuroanatomy atlas, supporting 2D and 3D exploration of volumetric electron microscopy tissue segmentations. Built a 2D slice viewer using GPU textures as lookup tables for segment ID–colour mapping, and a 3D surface mesh viewer with volumetric path tracing in shaders.

Climate-Health Explorer (Illinois Department of Public Health) — Interactive maps and statistical visualisations of gridded climate data and syndromic surveillance data.

Oceans 1876 (Andrew Carnegie Fellowship) — Interactive map visualisation of HMS Challenger expedition data (1872–76), providing a pre-industrial baseline for oceanographic research.

Direct Air Capture Hub (US Department of Energy) — Geospatial dataset viewer with temporal support using GeoServer WMS and WFS.

Transportation Review for Ecological Compliance (Illinois Department of Transportation) — Form application with complex reactive logic and geospatial processing using PostGIS and GeoPandas.

Cloud Biofoundry (NSF iBioFoundry) — Web-based cyberinfrastructure providing remote access to the iBioFoundry facility, exposing a multi-agentic AI system for automated experiment design and Thermo Fisher Momentum software for robotic instrument control.

Digital Molecule Maker (NSF Molecule Maker Lab Institute) — Educational platform for building-block-based chemical synthesis, developed as part of the NSF Molecule Maker Lab Institute curriculum initiative (see Publications).

Gllue Software, Shanghai

Software Engineer, Applicant Tracking System, 2020 – 2021

Developed and maintained a drag-and-drop UI builder powering an applicant tracking system used by HR departments at Baidu, Tencent, L’Oréal, and others; contributed to an identity broker for a single sign-on platform.

JADE Technologies, Atlanta

Volunteer, 2019 – 2020

Contributed to Étude, an Electron-based NLP-powered PDF reader with smart highlighting and semantic search, developed as a YC applicant startup by Georgia Tech students.

Publications & Technical Reports

Green, N. M., Hammond, R. I., Planey, J., Angello, N. H., Putnam, J. L. B., Berry, M., He, W., Chen, E., Nuñez-Corrales, S., Loving, D. C., Wang, W., Huang, T., Gunasekera, B., Marville, K., Switzky, R., Desmond, S., & Burke, M. D. Illuminating the Interface of Blocc Chemistry and Data Science: Maximizing Function with ML-Guided Discovery and a Digital Molecule Maker. Journal of Chemical Education, 103(2), 976–985, 2026. doi:10.1021/acs.jchemed.5c00795

He, W. Exploring Color Spaces in the Context of Chemistry Education. CS 597 Individual Study Report, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2023. doi:10.5281/zenodo.10367788