Marco Frank
GDS from μTheia project
Experience
Undergraduate Researcher — UCSC Hardware Systems Collective
April 2025 – Present
- Research under Dustin Richmond
- Parameterized element-wise vectorized operations and RMSNorm reduction logic in ternip core, extending support from fixed dimensions (1024/2048/2560) to arbitrary vector lengths
- Implemented ternary weight compression and decompression hardware in SystemVerilog, reducing memory bandwidth requirements for ternip core inference
- SystemVerilog RTL development for ternip core, a hardware accelerator for MatmulFree LLM inference deployed on Xilinx UltraScale+ U250 (300 MHz, 110 tokens/sec)
- Contributing to TSMC 6nm tapeout incorporating a SiFive RISC-V core for system orchestration
Cofounder — JobsMatch
March 2024 – March 2025
- Co-founded a job matching platform featuring a swipe-based UX, vector embedding resume screening, and a multi-stage applicant tracking system (ATS)
- Built frontend in React/JavaScript and backend with Firebase and Sendbird
- 5 small businesses and startups set to start in pilot program
Undergraduate Researcher — SCIPP
November 2023 – April 2024
- Research under Michael Hance
- Performed hardware characterization testing for temperature and power exposure on detector components
Software Intern — Arteris IP
July 2023 – September 2023
- Developed Python test APIs and script automation for validation of the Ncore Network-on-Chip IP product
- Identified and documented an interfacing defect in the Qt-based UI toolchain, improving test reliability
Education
MS Computer Science and Engineering — UCSC
September 2026 – Present
- Research: Hardware Systems Collective
- Focus: Computer Architecture, VLSI, FPGA
BS Computer Engineering (Computer Systems) & BS Applied Physics (Computational Physics) — UCSC
September 2021 – June 2026
- Research: Hardware Systems Collective · Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics
- Relevant coursework: Logic Design (CSE 100), VLSI Design (CSE 122), Chip Design (CSE 127A/B), Computer Architecture (CSE 220), ASIC Design (CSE 225), Brain Inspired Machine Learning (ECE 110), Quantum Computing (PHYS 150), Physics and Machine Learning (PHYS 152)