I am an engineer and origami lover.
I work for a semiconductor company in Dallas Texas as a system/chip architect. My professional interests are DSP architecture, video and image processing, computer architecture, and computer arithmetic.
I grew up in Taiwan. I have been folding since I was a child. I just found some origami books (in Chinese) in local library and followed instruction for simpler models. Gradually I moved up to more challenging ones, and acquired a few books. Among my earliest books is Mother and Child Origami, by Toyoaki Kawai. I consider Mr. Kawai my origami master.
I started to put my hobby to use by doing origami decoration projects for my company (Texas Instruments in Dallas) yearly Chinese New Year Luncheon around 1997, typically putting together 40 – 50 models; one piece per table. One year we did all 12 Chinese zodiac animals, one year we did all dragons, and one year we did all monkeys (my design, see my gallery). Occasionally I volunteer in local festivals to demonstrate/teach origami. I still have a lot to learn to be a good teacher.
On-and-off I tried to create new models or improve upon existing ones. I have been most productive in Christmas 2003. Within 3 months that followed I developed about 20 models. I am not as inventive any more. I'm waiting patiently for my retirement, when I can spend a lot more time.
I favor simple 3-D designs that can be folded with ordinary paper. Most of my models can be made from 8 x 11.5 inch color paper packs I bought from Walmart. I try to stick to folding, but as a tradeoff of details vs effort vs methodology, I sometimes go with Kirigomi Origami, i.e., scissor cuts.
My favorite models are Joseph Wu’s Eastern Dragon and Kawasaki’s Rose. You can find a Simple Rose, a variation of Kawasaki Rose, at my Gallery. The model I most want to learn is Satoshi Kamiya's Eastern Dragon (Ryu-Zin)
I think origami and my engineering job have a lot in common. Both are constrained optimization, in the sense that all practiioners start from common raw materials (paper, semiconductor), stick to common rules (folds, circuit theory), undergo many iterations of changes, and often strive to meet multi-dimensional goals (effort vs life-likeness, power/cost/ schedule vs features/performance).