Hi! I am a 2nd year PhD student in Computer Science at UC San Diego, advised by Michael Coblenz. I am part of the Programming Systems Group and the Design Lab.

My research is in human-computer interaction, with a focus on programming tools. Lately, I’ve been excited about shrinking the power gap between spreadsheets and code for end-users working with data.

In the past, I worked on program synthesis, CS education, and biology. I did my undergrad and MS at UC Berkeley, where I worked with Sarah E. Chasins and Justin Lubin. I owe a lot to my amazing mentors, past and present!

Publications

^{(* = equal contribution)}

Theme Work on Teamwork: Mapping Student Teaming Experiences in Design Projects [link]
Sara Beckman, Krina Patel, Qiuquan Gu, Shang Zhu, Alexander Cui, and Jacob Yim
FIE 2024

Equivalence by Canonicalization for Synthesis-Backed Refactoring [link]
Justin Lubin, Jeremy Ferguson*, Kevin Ye*, Jacob Yim*, and Sarah E. Chasins
PLDI 2024

Supporting Mastery Learning with Flexible Extensions [link]
Yuerou Tang*, Jacob Yim*, Jordan Schwartz, Madison Bohannan, Dana Benedicto, Charisse Liu, Armando Fox, Lisa Yan, and Narges Norouzi
SIGCSE TS 2024 Poster

Automated Support for Flexible Extensions [link]
Jordan Schwartz, Madison Bohannan, Jacob Yim, Yuerou Tang, Dana Benedicto, Charisse Liu, Armando Fox, Lisa Yan, and Narges Norouzi
SIGCSE TS 2024 Poster

Searching for Incidental Specifications [link]
Jeremy Ferguson*, Kevin Ye*, Jacob Yim*, and Justin Lubin
PLATEAU 2023

Reprogramming of DNA methylation at NEUROD2-bound sequences during cortical neuron differentiation [link]
Maria A Hahn, Seung-Gi Jin, Arthur X Li, Jiancheng Liu, Zhijun Huang, Xiwei Wu, Byung-Wook Kim, Jennifer Johnson, Adrienne-Denise V Bilbao, Shu Tao, Jacob A Yim, Yuman Fong, Sandra Goebbels, Markus H Schwab, Qiang Lu, and Gerd P Pfeifer
Science Advances

Teaching

CSE 210: Principles of Software Engineering @ UCSD
teaching assistant: Winter 2026

DSC 106: Data Visualization @ UCSD
head teaching assistant: Fall 2025

Data 100: Principles and Techniques of Data Science @ UC Berkeley
lead teaching assistant: Summer 2024
teaching assistant: Spring 2023, Fall 2022, Summer 2022
course tutor: Spring 2022, Fall 2021

^{last updated: 2/26/26 ☃️}