Mika Tan

About

Hello, welcome to my website! My name is Mika. I am a Malaysian national, born and raised in Thailand before moving to the Philippines where I lived for 12 years of my life. I completed my Middle School, High School, and International Baccalaureate diploma at International School Manila.

Now, I am a First Year Undergraduate Student at UBC pursuing a Bachelor of Science under the Faculty of Science, and a Masters of Management under the Sauder School of Business. I intend to Major in Math and Minor in Physics. I want to study Math because it challenges me, and I love Physics because it inspires me to learn more about our universe.

I run often and am training for my first Ultramarathon (Diez Vista 50k) in April 2026!

Also, I love reading books of all genres (mostly sci-fi and non-fiction) and am always open to book suggestions.

Education

The University of British Columbia

• Intended Major in Mathematics and Minor in Physics
• Outstanding International Student Award Scholarship Recipient
• Relevant Coursework: Linear Algebra, Discrete Maths, Calculus I and II, Systematic Program Design, Dynamics and Waves, Electricity and Magnetism
• GPA: 3.7

International School Manila

• Class President
• MUN Club President
• Code Club President
• Moon Koo Lee Outstanding Senior Award

Experience

Software Engineer

• Developing and prototyping a Remote Monitoring System (RMS) for the Sustainable Mobile Research Testbed (SMRT) Project.
• Part of the Electrical & Software Team of Sustaingineering, a UBC Engineering Design Team.
• The RMS uses Microcontrollers, Sensors, and a Raspberry Pi to monitor and collect environmental data inside and outside the SMRT Project
• Skills: CircuitPY, Adafruit, RaspberryPi

AI Researcher

• 2nd author of "Diffusion Transformers Use Sink Registers" published under AAAI-26 in XAI4Science.
• Investigated High-Norm Activations in Diffusion Transformers (Text-To-Image Models), showing they encode semantic information while not greatly affecting image quality when ablated.
• Skills: Google Colab, Python, Machine Learning, Research, LaTeX

Full Stack Developer

• Solo-developed two iterations of the Manila World University Fair Web App
• Information-sharing system connecting University representatives and high school students.
• Used by 600+ users in 2024 and 2025, facilitating 1200+ connections between 170 universities and 400 students.
• Skills: Next.js, TypeScript, Tailwind, MongoDB, React, ASP.NET, SwaggerUI, msSQL, Git

Parts Order Processor

• Processed car part orders from nationwide dealerships, creating invoices and order manifests, matching purchases with warehouse part availability.
• Skills: Order Management

Warehouse Worker

• Performed daily picking/sorting for orders, unpacking from deliveries, and weekly parts audits.
• Skills: Auditing, Warehouse Operations

Projects and Publications

• Diffusion Transformers Use Sink Registers A. Jamal, M. Tan, C. Saputra, Q. Huynh, K. Zhu, A. Mari. Second Workshop on XAI4Science (AAAI), 2025.
• Manila World University Fair Web Application
• Extended Essay in Mathematics: How is the general solution to the 2-Body Problem found by reducing it to a 1 Dimensional 1-Body Central Force Problem?