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 end-user programming tools. Lately, I’ve been thinking about ways to close the power gap between spreadsheets and code. I’m also interested in flexible, configurable tools for visually representing, manipulating, and computing with data. If you’re also excited about these things, or if you’re looking to get involved in research, I would love to hear from you!

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)}

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

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

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: 4/24/26 🌼}