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Jesse S

- Research Program Mentor

PhD candidate at University of Chicago

Expertise

Theoretical Computer Science, Cryptography, Mathematics, and Logic

Bio

I am a PhD student at the University of Chicago doing research in theoretical computer science. I have been doing research in this area since high school. Over these 10 years of research, I have had the privilege to be mentored by 6 different professors who have helped to guide my research and career and travel globally to conferences and workshops. At a fundamental level, I am most fascinated by basic theoretical questions in the field (such as P vs NP) and by the study of mathematical proofs. I have also done extensive research in theoretical cryptography among other sub-fields. On a personal level, I greatly enjoy games and worked briefly as a board game designer. Sometimes this overlaps directly with my research (such as by studying the computational complexity of games or using games as a way to study interactive algorithms), but I admit that often it is just because I love a good puzzle or competitive game. As a person who loved math and logic, but struggled greatly in early education due to my dyslexia, I have since gained a life-long love of helping others work through difficult material and look forward to working with students on projects of mutual interest.

Project ideas

Project ideas are meant to help inspire student thinking about their own project. Students are in the driver seat of their research and are free to use any or none of the ideas shared by their mentors.

The Complexity of Problems and Mathematical Limits of Computers

There are an endless number of fascinating and practical problems that we hope to solve with the help of computers. While some of these problems have efficient algorithms, such an algorithm is far from guaranteed to exist. During this project, we will focus on a problem of interest to you (i.e. the student). Rather then simply hoping this problem can be solved efficiently and diving straight into programming, we will study the mathematical structure the problem and prove limitations on our ability to write algorithms to solve it. Not only does this give us deep insight into the structure of problem, but it is of vast practical interest, as such results tell us what is and is not possible. One major benefit of this is that if anyone later tries to use computers to solve this problem, they can avoid seeking overly ambitious algorithms that may in fact be entirely non-existent, saving vast time and effort due to the insight granted them by your theoretical analysis of the problem. For a concrete example of such a project, I did a project along these lines myself as a high school student. The project was awarded 1st Prize at the Massachusetts State Science and Engineering Fair and the final paper can be found here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1052

Coding skills

Mathematica

Teaching experience

- Mentored 7 high school students in theoretical computer science projects (currently via Polygence, previously via Summer STEM Institute 2020 and 2021). - Mentor for the project "An Improved A* Search Algorithm for Road Networks Using New Heuristic Estimation" for which the student won one of only 10 of the SSI 2021 Distinguished Paper awards (this paper can be found here: https://www.summersteminstitute.org/distinguished-projects#:~:text=Students%20in%20the%20SSI%20Research,computational%20biology%20to%20quantum%20physics.) - Worked as a teaching assistant for 11 graduate and undergraduate courses at the University of Chicago. - Tutored in mathematics for over 10 years, specializing in working with students with disabilities. - Have designed and taught workshops and a summer program on topics in theoretical computer science and mathematics for students from 4th grade to high school.

Credentials

Work experience

California Institute of Technology (2017 - 2017)
Researcher
University of Connecticut (2016 - 2016)
Researcher

Education

University of Rochester
BA Bachelor of Arts (2018)
Logic and Computation
University of Chicago
PhD Doctor of Philosophy candidate
Computer Science

Completed Projects

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