I'm Nimo. I build ergonomic digital tools to make difficult things feel simple.

Research

I recently received my Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University, School of Computer Science, advised by Ken Koedinger and Josh Sunshine. Here are some selected papers. Refer to the CV for more.

Authoring Conceptual Diagrams by Codifying Visual Representations
  • Wode Ni
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    Ph.D. Dissertation. Carnegie Mellon University.
    Edgeworth: Efficient and Scalable Authoring of Visual Thinking Activities
  • Wode Ni
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  • Sam Estep
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  • Hwei-Shin Harriman
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  • Kenneth R. Koedinger
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  • Joshua Sunshine
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    LAS'24.
    Codifying Visual Representations
  • Wode Ni*
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  • Sam Estep*
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  • Hwei-Shin Harriman*
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  • Jiří Minarčík
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  • Joshua Sunshine
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    DIAGRAMS'24.
    bib
    Rose: Composable Autodiff for the Interactive Web
  • Sam Estep
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  • Wode Ni
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  • Raven Rothkopf
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  • Joshua Sunshine
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    ECOOP'24.
    bib
    Minkowski Penalties: Robust Differentiable Constraint Enforcement for Vector Graphics
  • Jiří Minarčík
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  • Sam Estep
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  • Wode Ni
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  • Keenan Crane
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    SIGGRAPH'24.
    Syntactic Code Search with Sequence-to-Tree Matching: Supporting Syntactic Search with Incomplete Code Fragments
  • Gabriel Matute
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  • Wode Ni
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  • Titus Barik
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  • Alvin Cheung
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  • Sarah E. Chasins
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    PLDI'24.
    reCode: A Lightweight Find-and-Replace Interaction in the IDE for Transforming Code by Example
  • Wode Ni
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  • Joshua Sunshine
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  • Vu Le
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  • Sumit Gulwani
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  • Titus Barik
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    UIST'21.
    Penrose: From Mathematical Notation to Beautiful Diagrams
  • Katherine Ye
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  • Wode Ni
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  • Max Krieger
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  • Dor Ma'ayan
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  • Jenna Wise
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  • Jonathan Aldrich
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  • Joshua Sunshine
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  • Keenan Crane
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    SIGGRAPH'20.
    How Domain Experts Create Conceptual Diagrams and Implications for Tool Design
  • Wode Ni*
  • ,
  • Dor Ma'ayan*
  • ,
  • Katherine Ye
  • ,
  • Chinmay Kulkarni
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  • Joshua Sunshine
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    CHI'20.
    About

    My name is 倪沃德 (ní wò dé) in Chinese. “Nimo” has been my alias since my street dancing days. If you find "Wo-de" hard to pronounce, default to “Nimo”.

    I am an avid pool player. I play in local leagues and national tournaments.

    Right now I'm working on interactive diagramming at Brilliant.

    News
    September 2024
    I guess I'm Dr.Nimo now. Watch my thesis defense talk.
    September 2024
    Finished the dissertation document and will defend in a few weeks!
    July 2024
    The Edgeworth paper was nominated for the Best Paper Award at L@S'24!
    July 2024
    Attending L@S'24 for the first time in Atlanta. Check out the slides of my talk!
    June 2024
    Always meant to submit something to a conference with DIAGRAM in its name. Well, done that.
    June 2024
    The Rose paper was accepted at ECOOP 2024!
    May 2024
    Excited to welcome summer interns Kyle and Griffin to the Penrose team!
    April 2024
    "Edgeworth: Efficient and Scalable Authoring of Visual Thinking Activities" was accepted at Learning @ Scale 2024!
    April 2024
    "Minkowski Penalties: Robust Differentiable Constraint Enforcement for Vector Graphics" was accepted at SIGGRAPH 2024!
    February 2024
    Paper accepted at PLDI 2024: Syntactic Code Search with Sequence-to-Tree Matching!
    January 2024
    New year, new round of rewriting this site. Used Tailwind this time and we have dark mode now!
    December 2023
    Invited to attend an AIM workshop on Digital Ecosystems for Mathematics and started mathdiagrams.com!
    July 2023
    Released Penrose 3.0!
    June 2023
    REUSE students Rijul Jain and Raven Rothkopf joined Penrose this summer. Welcome!
    August 2022
    Spent the summer as an intern in Machine Intelligence at Apple. Stay tuned for more updates on our work!
    April 2022
    I proposed (talk, (text)) my dissertation. Officially a PhD candidate now!
    July 2021
    My work at Microsoft, "reCode: A Lightweight Find-and-Replace Interaction in the IDE for Transforming Code by Example," was conditionally accepted by UIST 2021!
    May 2020
    I'll join PROSE @ Microsoft Research as a Research Intern this summer!
    April 2020
    The first conference paper on Penrose, "Penrose: From Mathematical Notation to Beautiful Diagrams," was accepted by SIGGRAPH 2020!
    March 2020
    The CHI paper won a Best Paper Honourable Mention award 🏆!
    January 2020
    Our paper "How Domain Experts Create Conceptual Diagrams and Implications for Tool Design" was accepted by CHI 2020 🏖️!
    October 2019
    I presented our papers at PLATEAU 2019 with Max and Anael!
    May 2019
    I finished 7th at the 2019 ACUI Collegiate Nine-ball National Championship 🎱!
    May 2019
    Anael Kuperwajs, Courtney Miller, Max Krieger will join us as REUSE students this summer. Welcome!
    April 2018
    I will join CMU as a Ph.D. student!
    January 2018
    I will be one of the TAs for COMS 4115 again in Spring 2018.
    October 2017
    Gave a talk at DSLDI 2017 in Vancouver, Canada.
    May 2017
    Joined REU-SE, a summer research program, at Carnegie Mellon University.
    © 2025 Wode "Nimo" Ni.