Kolen Cheung
Research Software Engineer at University of Exeter
Exeter, England, United Kingdom
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolKolen Cheung is a Research Software Engineer based in Exeter with 11 years of experience combining a PhD in Physics from UC Berkeley with practical scientific computing and research software development. He has a strong track record in backend and tooling work across notable open-source projects such as Pandoc and Numba, improving binary management, LaTeX filter support, and test automation for parallel execution. At the University of Exeter he applies rigorous research training to production-quality code, prioritizing robustness, maintainability, and reproducible workflows. His contributions to widely used projects show a knack for bridging academic needs and developer ergonomics—e.g., parsing Pandoc versions from HTML and extending pandocfilters for complex LaTeX environments. Comfortable across full-stack roles in research contexts, he brings both deep numerical understanding and practical release/build automation skills. Colleagues would describe him as a methodical problem-solver who improves developer experience in ways that quietly scale across communities.
11 years of coding experience
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Physics, Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Physics at University of California, BerkeleyHong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST)
Github Skills (44)
markdown10
pytest10
python10
converter10
static-site-generator10
testing10
packaging10
configuration-management10
homebrew-cask10
refactor10
plugin10
numpy10
latex10
markdown-it10
parallel-computing10
Programming languages (25)
Github contributions (5)
jgm/pandocfilters
Apr 2016 - Sep 2021
A python module for writing pandoc filters, with a collection of examples
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:4 releases, 39 commits, 12 PRs in 5 years 5 months
Contributions summary:Kolen primarily focused on enhancing the functionality of the `pandocfilters` Python module. Their contributions involved creating and integrating new filters, specifically for converting specific div elements into LaTeX environments. Furthermore, the user implemented a system for generating multiple `amsthm` environments, including the necessary code to generate new environments. This suggests a focus on extending the module's capabilities to handle more complex LaTeX transformations.
pandocpythondocstringsfiltershints
jgm/pandoc
Mar 2016 - Jan 2022
Universal markup converter
Role in this project:Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:1 review, 48 commits, 42 PRs in 5 years 11 months
Contributions summary:Kolen primarily contributed to the Pandoc project by enhancing its functionality and maintaining code quality. They made modifications to the codebase, including updates to external dependencies like MathJax and KaTeX, and implemented new features like support for "text/markdown" mime type in the ipynb reader. They also refactored code, improved the user experience by updating copyright information, and fixed issues related to code and documentation formatting.
pandocmarkup-converterpublishingpresentationcommonmark
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