Hey! What's up guys, this is Allison Li from Mechanabox. I'm a student at Olin College of Engineering majoring in Engineering with a Concentration in Robotics, graduating in at the end of 2024. I've been a maker for as long as I can remember, always taking apart and putting back together whatever I could get my hands on.

As a robotics engineer, I have gained a wide range of experience including mechanical design and analysis, electrical prototyping and testing, control systems, embedded software development, and testing and analysis scripting. I specialize in embedded hardware systems, which includes the integration of sensor and motor systems with firmware and control software. I have interned at Formlabs, SpaceX, and Tesla and worked on research with the Olin College Crowdsourcing and Machine Learning lab. My resume can be found here and my LinkedIn here.

I learned how to solve a Rubik's Cube in 2013 and have been an active member of the cubing community since then. I've collected nearly 200 different puzzles and have competed in over 20 competitions. My official results can be found here. I started my YouTube channel as TheProgrammingCuber in March of 2014 and uploaded consistently for several years before taking a break in the last few years to focus on school and my other activites. My videos primarily consisted of unboxings of puzzles, reviews, and competition vlogs. I also released several videos of my Rubik's cube modifications ("mods"), which has become my primary interest in cubing recently. My other primary project on YouTube is as a co-host of the Dlsone Podcast, a cubing podcast that I started with my friends.

Prior to college, I was on VEX high school team 750R for two years, one of six teams in my high school's club. I spent my first year as a co-captain of the team and the lead mechanical engineer, and we made the World Championships with a top 100 world skills ranking. My second year I remained the lead mechanical engineer but stepped down from the captain position to become a co-president of the club, and throughout the year I worked with all six teams and helped organize freshman tryouts and other events, including our home competition.

Music has also played a large part in my life, as I have been playing clarinet since I was 9 years old. I was in school concert band from 4th grade through my senior year and spent all four years of high school in the marching band, which won three state titles and four Yamaha cup titles in my time there. My junior year, our wind ensemble recorded an audition tape for the National Concert Band Festival, which we were subsequently accepted to and were set to perform at the event in Indianapolis in March of 2020 before it was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

My primary contact is through email at ali1@olin.edu. My official social media accounts are my YouTube and Instagram. Thanks for visiting the website, I hope you enjoy my projects!