Figure 1: The Infamous Mel

Hello, and welcome to the homepage of Meline “Mel” Young (they/she).

I’m a 23 year old 🇦🇺 Australian PhD researcher at Macquarie University, in Sydney.

Thanks for stopping by my website, I hope you enjoy your stay here!

What am I working on?

My research focus concerns the design and verification of mixed-signal integrated circuits for neuroscience data acquisition applications, using open-source EDA tools. I’m specialising in ultra-low power techniques, most importantly the design of novel low-power and low-bandwidth data compression methods. I’m also working on improving free and open-source EDA tools for my purposes.

You may also be interested to see my list of projects.

What am I interested in?

For the past few years, my main interest has been computer engineering/digital design: processor design, EDA techniques and digital ASIC design. That being said, I also remain interested in a lot of other things! To list them off:

• Robotics
• Computer graphics
• Retro computing/emulation
• High-performance and distributed computing
• Gamedev (mostly engine development)
• Cybersecurity (binary exploitation and reverse engineering)
• Data compression, file formats, and serialisation
• Lexers and parsers
• Embedded systems

I have worked or continue to work in a number of the above areas.

Generalising the specific fields above into a more broad statement, I care the most about:

• When I feel like I’m doing something complex and novel
• A solution being efficient. I’m deeply passionate about computational efficiency (and efficiency in general), and desire to extract all the performance I can from a system I’m designing while using as little resources as possible
• When I’m able to solve problems creatively, in new and interesting ways
• My work having a visible impact; it solves real problems for real people, and I feel like I’ve accomplished something significant

Where have I been before?

Before moving to Sydney, I lived for 22 years in Brisbane, Australia - my home town.

Previously, I completed my undergraduate Bachelor of Computer Science degree between Feb. 2021 and July 2024, at the University of Queensland. After that, I completed my Bachelor of Computer Science (Honours) degree also at UQ, between July 2024 and November 2025, where I wrote the TaMaRa algorithm.

For 3 years I worked as an intern and then later Graduate Software Engineer at Emesent, a 3D LiDAR mapping company for GPS denied environments. I was a member of the SLAM team (Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping), and worked to maintain our in-house CSIRO-derived Wildcat SLAM system. My work there focused around bringing up new sensors, optimising and improving the C++ codebase, and earlier, maintaining the company’s internal payload calibration system.

Trivia

Hobbies

• I enjoy scuba diving!
  • Qualifications: PADI Rescue Diver, PADI Advanced Open Water Scuba Diver
  • Partially completed twin-set technical diving training
• I’m pretty interested in audio engineering, voice acting and music production, and occasionally make bad noises in Reaper (which I do actually own a licence for, and you should too!)
• I’m a big fan of electronic music, especially DnB; and also metal/metalcore
• I also every now and then write screenplays and short stories, particularly in the horror/cyberpunk genre
  • I might publish some of these here… someday…. maybe :)

Nerd stuff

• I daily drive Arch Linux (btw 🤓), and use KDE Plasma 6 as my desktop environment
  • yeah I previously tried the whole tiling window manager thing, but Plasma is still the best fit for me
• I use Neovim as my editor!
  • Check out my le epic dotfiles if you’re so inclined
• I use WezTerm as my terminal emulator
• I have a very small homelab setup consisting of Tailscale and a second hand Dell Optiplex that runs various services on Fedora
• Although I’m not an electrical engineer by trade, I do like to tinker with electronics, including dumping and archiving firmware and ID’ing microcontrollers here and there

Personal stuff

• I’ve got autism spectrum disorder level 1 (in case you couldn’t tell already lol)
• I also have dyscalculia, aka “dyslexia for maths”
• I am bisexual 🏳️‍🌈
• I am trans! 🏳️‍⚧️
• I use she/they pronouns
  Huh?

  You’re welcome to use either she or they pronouns when referring to me. “She” is preferred amongst close friends but may be used by anyone. “They” is always a welcome fallback, if you prefer.

  If you’re confused, please consider reading this first (which is now slightly outdated): I’m nonbinary. What does that mean?

Find me elsewhere

• GitHub (slowly moving to Codeberg)
• Codeberg
• WakaTime
• Internet Archive
• OpenStreetMap
• last.fm
• Mastodon
• Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, available at en.wikipedia.org
• Matrix: @mlyoung:fossi-chat.org
  • Not always checked!
• Email: mel.humansignorethis at mlyoung dot cool
  • Prohibited emails: AI slop, SaaS slop, web design/web development roles
  • Sending these will result in your entire domain being perma-blocked from my mail server

If you want to contact me, I suggest you email me.

Buttons and blinkies!

Favicon by R01-envie on DeviantArt

Privacy policy and GDPR (tl;dr I don’t track you, but third parties might)