Department: Applied and Computational Mathematics Faculty Adviser: Boris Hanin Year of Study: G3 Undergraduate School: Northwestern University, Illinois Institute of Technology Undergraduate Major: Applied Mathematics, Statistics
I grew up in Buffalo, New York. Originally I wanted to be a writer and started college in the humanities, declaring first in creative writing and classics. I took some mathematics courses here and there until a sudden phase transition drove me into mathematics. My first research experience was a program not too different from ReMatch. This is where I discovered computational/theoretical neuroscience. I worked with a physicist on some neural circuit models in mouse visual cortex. It was this experience that got me thinking about a future in science, and it led me into a fellowship at MIT after graduating to work on more computational neuroscience.
I like techno and house music, and formerly was a DJ during undergrad. I like sports; I played lacrosse and I watch American football and hockey. Poke is (currently, ~Sep '26) my favorite food, but nothing beats a good carbonara. I have a cat named Marshal. Love good coffee and had a stint at a roastery once upon a time. Other topics outside of mathematics I really enjoy learning/talking about: - unconventional approaches to computing (non-digital, analog, etc) - mathematics autoformalization - complex systems (biology, neuroscience, etc)
I study large systems that organize, learn, and compute. Currently, I'm working on the mathematical foundations of deep neural networks, the brain-inspired technology powering artificial intelligence. These are huge webs of simple, interconnected "neurons" tuned by training on examples. They work remarkably well, but a theory of what they learn or how they fail is far from complete. It's a bit like how we engineered steam engines before anyone had a clue what "heat" really meant. To build that theory, I borrow ideas from mathematics and physics that describe enormous numbers of interacting components, like molecules in a gas.
Interested in participating in Summer 2027 ReMatch+ program.
