stuff @ uw

teaching

i’ve been a teaching assistant for the cs department at uw since the summer right after freshman year. if you’re at uw and are considering applying to teach for a class you took at some point; i highly recommend it; definitely one of the most formative experiences i’ve had in college. below is a possibly outdated list of courses i’ve ta’ed for

• Foundations of Computing I (CSE 311)
  sp 23
• Foundations of Computing II (CSE 312)
  su 22 fall 22
• Algorithms and Computational Complexity (CSE 417)
  wi 24
• Toolkit for Modern Algorithms (CSE 422)
  wi 25
• Introduction to Quantum Computing (CSE 434)
  sp 24
• Introduction to Machine Learning (CSE 446)
  wi 23
• Graduate Quantum Computing (CSE 534)
  fall 23 fall 24

some important links if pedagogy and education in cs are interesting/relevant to you

• ta home page
• cs education seminar
• association for computing and education (student rso)

reading and research

• i’m currently working with Andrea Coladangelo and Chinmay Nirkhe on the \(\textsf{QMC}\) problem where we’re trying to develop better approximation algorithms to find a high energy state for a class of \(k\)-local hamiltonians that while physically motivated, also serve as a generalization for the max-cut problem.
• this spring, i worked within WXML on a project with Stefan Steinerberger alongside some other students on the Bad Science Matrix problem which consisted in finding, among all \(\mathbf{A} \in \mathbb{R}^{n \times n}\), with rows having unit \(\ell^2\) norm, the one that maximized

  $$ \begin{align*} \beta(\mathbf{A}) = \frac{1}{2^n} \sum_{\mathbf{x} \in \{-1, 1\}^n} \|\mathbf{A}\mathbf{x}\|_{\infty} \end{align*} $$

  you can find the pre-print here at arXiv. we’re also in the vetting process of submitting this to involve.

• in a past life, i worked with Sara Mouradian and Vikram Kashyap on understanding systems of qu\(d\)its and how they affected fidelity estimates and error rates in experiment. this project investigated error correction codes, developing a notion of universality for qu\(d\)it systems and how different architectures could be used to improve the fidelity of quantum computations. some relevant links for the same
  • a talk i gave at the uw undergradate research symposium
  • a research presentation with some more exposition
• i also participated in the directed reading program the math department @ uw runs. alongside Brian Nugent, we read up on a different perspective on teaching commutative algebra, see: Miles Reid, one that was more focused on the geometric aspects of the subject. as a consequence i got to see a lot of beautiful results from algebraic geometry i wouldn’t have otherwise seen.
  • a summary talk i gave on the stuff we learnt

lecture notes

as u can already tell; i’m a huge fan of writing. also a big \(\latex\) person; whatever that may entail. here are some lecture notes i’ve written; many of which are still works in progress.

• [notes on graph theory ]