Projects
What I've built, researched & explored
From on-chip photonics sensors to net-zero estate designs, from philosophy essays to sci-fi novels: every project here reflects a different dimension of curiosity.
I wanted to express my interests beyond academics, so I curated my projects, hobbies and books into one place. This site is the result.
- Built with HTML, CSS & JS, accelerated with Claude AI, adopted during my internship after watching others transform their workflows (then automating my own)
- I know basic HTML & CSS, so I still understand the code; AI just made the build faster
- What I learnt: AI can make things fast, but it can also break things fast. Managing AI, like managing people, is all about clarity and communication
- Hard skills: Cloudflare Pages, servers and domains (explored, haven't bought one yet)
Anyway, hope you enjoy the website!
In my explorations, I realised becoming a simple business owner has become far more
accessible: you no longer need to be a software engineer to do full-stack development.
So I started building something I've always wanted on my own phone: an app with genuine
educational value, wrapped in smooth, simple aesthetics,
and most importantly, a way to share my love for math and the sciences.
More updates coming soon.
- Designed the architecture for running local LLMs on my own PC, so AI keeps working even in an internet outage
- Had Gemini write the app code; it now lives on my PC as Gellama, a mix of "Gelane" (my old gaming username) and "Ollama"
- A local LLM army: many small specialised models instead of one massive all-rounder (which my PC can't fit anyway)
- An ML router computes a semantic vector for each request, then based on the meaning, pulls in the local LLM best suited for the job
Started as a university philosophy module (NUS UTW1001T), but quickly became a passion
project revisited during breaks from engineering.
Argues that individual reward should be proportional to actual contribution to
society, drawing on Mill's utilitarianism, luck egalitarianism, and a novel
"contribution model." The question: does the inventor of something that already exists
deserve credit?
Made into a video essay and compiled into blog posts. Plans to develop a fuller version
covering new arguments from the final written paper.
Designed a spacecraft to utilise passive magnetic shielding to safely traverse the Van Allen radiation belts, enabling long-duration recording and experiments in high-radiation orbital environments.
Ideated sustainable solutions for Singapore's infrastructure to achieve net-zero
estates. Reached the Top 10 nationally.
Uniquely combined a passion for creative building in Minecraft with
real sustainability engineering: building and rendering a full net-zero estate
with shaders before translating it into formal proposal slides.
Integrated into building facades and windows to harvest energy without sacrificing aesthetics.
Using soil bacteria around plant roots to generate electricity from organic matter in green corridors.
Wind micro-turbines paired with rooftop water tanks as gravity-based on-demand energy storage.
Capturing hot air discharged by AC units and redirecting it to heat water, reducing grid load.
Dense vertical greenery on building walls for photosynthesis-based carbon capture within the estate.
H2 Project Work: Singapore's A-Level capstone research and design project. Designed a three-pronged community app to drive carbon-free behaviour change:
- Educate: Instagram-style awareness & publicity feed
- Encourage: Goal setter, gamified carbon tracker & incentives
- Enrich: Community design feed & green living inspiration
Designed full app UI/UX in Figma. Gathered user feedback and iterated through multiple design cycles.
Hosted a Zoom discussion room for international student researchers. Participated in a mini-research project exploring ways to keep water systems clean, contributing to global youth science dialogue on environmental challenges.
Designed and developed a novel on-chip gas sensor using absorption spectroscopy for
monitoring agricultural air quality in vertical farms, part of Singapore's 30 by 30
food security initiative, in partnership with A*STAR IHPC.
Invented the "bowtie waveguide", a dual-region waveguide structure with
80% confinement factor in high-transmission zones and 1.62% in sensing zones, achieving
theoretical power loss ≤15% (<1.0 dB/cm). Increased overall confinement factor by 5%
over prior designs. Awarded Distinction.
Week-long virtual camp by DSTA's Young Defence Scientists Programme (YDSP),
covering space technology, satellite mechanics, AI for satellite imagery, and web development.
Culminated in a competitive design challenge. Champions.
Built The Universe Archive, a space history website in HTML & CSS taking users
through 20th–21st century space exploration, paired with an AI image recognition bot
achieving above 85% accuracy on satellite imagery (climate change, natural disasters).
Also designed a companion app UI in Figma.
Helped design the interior of my home for a full renovation. My mum built a physical
scale model; I translated the vision into a 3D digital model using SketchUp,
complete with spatial layout, furniture placement and proportions.
The SketchUp model directly informed the final renovation: an early experience in
applied 3D design with real-world consequences.
Designed a simple, low-cost slip-on clip that attaches to standard soap
dispensers to reduce wasteful over-dispensing, addressing everyday plastic and soap
waste at the point of use.
Awarded Distinction.
Three long-form fiction projects, each at a different stage, and collectively responsible for a deep interest in world-building, character arcs, and the philosophy of narrative.
These projects led to map-drawing and concept art. I've studied character arcs from Shakespeare to the MCU; still find well-developed arcs the hardest craft to master.
Map drawing for fiction world-building, concept art for characters and environments. More of a workaholic now, but the creative instinct persists. Images coming soon.
A long-standing creative outlet: building detailed worlds that blend aesthetics
with imagination. The same spatial instinct that went into the SketchUp home
renovation and the Energy Grand Challenge proposal.
Follow at @ljymc04 on Instagram.