Curriculum Vitae

Publications

METRICS 2.0: A machine-learning based optimization system for IC design

Hashemi, S., Ho, C. T., Kahng, A. B., Liu, H. Y., & Reda, S. (2018). METRICS 2.0: A machine-learning based optimization system for IC design. In Workshop on Open-Source EDA Technology (p. 21).

SVM Learning for GFIS Trimer Health Monitoring in Helium-Neon Ion Beam Microscopy

Kahng, A. B., Liu, H. Y., Park, C., Pichumani, R., & Saul, L. SVM Learning for GFIS Trimer Health Monitoring in Helium-Neon Ion Beam Microscopy., Advanced Process Control Conference, 2019

Offline Reinforcement Learning with Munchausen Regularization

Liu, Hsin-Yu, Bharathan Balaji, Rajesh Gupta, and Dezhi Hong. " Offline Reinforcement Learning with Munchausen Regularization " Offline Reinforcement Learning Workshop at Neural Information Processing Systems, 2021 (NeurIPS 2021).

Safe HVAC Control via Batch Reinforcement Learning

Liu, H. Y., Balaji, B., Gao, S., Gupta, R., & Hong, D. (2022, May). Safe HVAC Control via Batch Reinforcement Learning. In 2022 ACM/IEEE 13th International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems (ICCPS) (pp. 181-192). IEEE.

B2RL: An open-source Dataset for Building Batch Reinforcement Learning

Liu, Hsin-Yu, Xiaohan Fu, Bharathan Balaji, Rajesh Gupta, and Dezhi Hong. "B2RL: an open-source dataset for building batch reinforcement learning." In Proceedings of the 9th ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Buildings, Cities, and Transportation, pp. 462-465. 2022.

Rule-based Policy Regularization for Reinforcement Learning-based Building Control

Policy Regularization in Model-Free Building Control via Comprehensive Approaches from Offline to Online Reinforcement Learning

Liu, Hsin-Yu. Policy Regularization in Model-Free Building Control via Comprehensive Approaches from Offline to Online Reinforcement Learning. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California San Diego, Jun. 2024.

Adaptive Policy Regularization for Offline-to-Online Reinforcement Learning in HVAC Control

Liu, Hsin-Yu. Adaptive Policy Regularization for Offline-to-Online Reinforcement Learning in HVAC Control. NeurIPS CCAI & ACM BuildSys'24. Nov. 2024.

Education

University of California, San Diego — Ph.D. in Computer Engineering
National Taiwan University — M.S. in Optoelectronics
National Central University — B.S. in Physics

Work experience

Apr. 2025 ~ Now: Applied AI Researcher
- Articul8 AI (Remote / Dublin, CA)
  - Improving hardware coding domain-specific models and benchmarks; post-training RL, synthetic data generation, and reinforcement-learning based personalization.
May 2024 ~ Apr. 2025: Machine Learning Engineer II
- Glidewell Dental (Irvine, CA)
  - Designed an Offline RL-based Next-Best-Action recommendation system and LLM RAG pipelines for unstructured documents; 2D-to-3D reconstruction projects for manufacturing.
Sep. 2018 ~ Jun. 2024: Graduate Student Researcher
- University of California - San Diego (La Jolla, CA, USA)
  - Research on online/offline/offline-to-online reinforcement learning, policy regularization, and RL for building HVAC control. Released open-source building batch RL datasets and published related work (Ph.D. dissertation Jun. 2024).
Jun. 2020 ~ Aug. 2020: Machine Learning Software Intern
- Cadence Design Systems (Milpitas, CA)
  - Developed and deployed clustering and partitioning algorithms for EDA performance and area optimization.
Oct. 2013 ~ Jul. 2018: Principal Application Engineer
- Cadence Design Systems (Hsinchu, Taiwan)
  - Built custom GUIs/scripts (Python, SKILL), supported customers, and collaborated with R&D on performance and feature improvements.
Nov. 2008 ~ Sep. 2013: R&D Engineer
- Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC, Hsinchu, Taiwan)
  - Research and development on OPC, DPT, and process-aware optimization for manufacturing.

Skills

Programming Languages:

Python, Perl, Tcl

ML / DL / RL Frameworks & Tools:

PyTorch, TensorFlow, Keras, NumPy, Pandas, scikit-learn, XGBoost, LightGBM, Stable-Baselines, OpenAI Gym, MuJoCo, HuggingFace

Infra / Tools:

Docker, Slurm, Kubernetes, AWS (S3/EC2/SageMaker)

VLSI / EDA Tools:

Cadence Virtuoso / PVS, Synopsys Proteus / ProGen / IC Workbench, Mentor SVRF, Brion Tachyon

Service and Leadership

Taipei animal shelter volunteer

Hsin-Yu, Liu (Desmond)

Curriculum Vitae

Publications

METRICS 2.0: A machine-learning based optimization system for IC design

SVM Learning for GFIS Trimer Health Monitoring in Helium-Neon Ion Beam Microscopy

Offline Reinforcement Learning with Munchausen Regularization

Safe HVAC Control via Batch Reinforcement Learning

B2RL: An open-source Dataset for Building Batch Reinforcement Learning

Rule-based Policy Regularization for Reinforcement Learning-based Building Control

Policy Regularization in Model-Free Building Control via Comprehensive Approaches from Offline to Online Reinforcement Learning

Adaptive Policy Regularization for Offline-to-Online Reinforcement Learning in HVAC Control

Education

Work experience

Skills

Talks

SVM Learning for GFIS Trimer Health Monitoring in Helium-Neon Ion Beam Microscopy

Offline Reinforcement Learning with Munchausen Regularization

Safe HVAC Control via Batch Reinforcement Learning

B2RL: An open-source Dataset for Building Batch Reinforcement Learning

Rule-based Policy Regularization for Reinforcement Learning-based Building Control

Z-Wave Alliance Summit — Unplug Fest 2025 (Panelist)

Service and Leadership