Hi, I'm Ben
About Me
I am a second year honors Computer Science undergraduate at the University of Minnesota, where I work with Professor Caiwen Ding on systems and computer architecture research.
My research interests include data compression, GPU kernel design, high-performance computing, and system profiling. In summer 2026, I was a research intern at the University of Chicago working with Professor Kyle Chard on high-performance computing research funded by the National Science Foundation and the UChicago Data Science Institute.
I am especially drawn to work that connects low-level systems ideas with real, measurable performance. Outside of formal research, I like building things with a hardware edge, including compute clusters and FPV drones, and I hope to pursue a PhD in computer systems or computer architecture.
Research Interests
My current work focuses on:
- GPU kernel programming and optimizations
- data compression for scientific and signal workloads
- serverless inference and high-performance distributed systems
- computer architecture, operating systems, and parallel algorithms
Recent Work
-
Transit-Layer Tensor Representation for Serverless Inference
B. Mechels, S. Shi, W. Wang, K. Chard. Under conference review, poster submission. -
FPTC: A Fast Parallel Transform-based Codec for Efficient
Asymmetric Signal Compression
B. Mechels, R. Billmeyer, A. Chen, S. Li, C. Ding. Under conference review. arXiv:2605.01086, 2026.
News
- Aug 2026
- Presented at UChicago Data Science Institute and Argonne National Laboratory
- Jun 2026
- Started as a research intern at the University of Chicago
- May 2026
- Published FPTC paper preprint to arXiv at arXiv:2605.01086
- Dec 2025
- Made College of Science & Engineering Dean's List
- May 2025
- Graduated from Washburn High School
- Aug 2024
- Started as a teaching assistant at the University of Minnesota