Class of 2022
Marshall Scholar
Goldwater Scholar
Hometown: Foxboro, Massachusetts
Majors: Physics and Computer Science
Minors: Mathematics and Chemistry
Hobbies: I'm largely interested in theoretical and mathematical biology/biophysics as well as computational nonlinear dynamics, machine learning, applied mathematics, deep learning, and software engineering. I'm also a big fan of religious studies and sociology.
Tell us about your Duke Experience:
I am interested in the intersection of mathematics, physics, computer science, and biology with specific research interests in theoretical biophysics, nonlinear dynamics, and machine learning. At Duke, I have largely explored these fields both through my dual majors of physics and computer science and through my work with Dr. Lingchong You in BME, where I am studying mathematical and deep learning techniques for characterizing emergent properties of large microbial communities such as the human gut microbiome. Concurrently, as a visiting researcher at the NSF-Simons Quantitative Biology center, I am additionally developing novel machine learning techniques for hidden variable discovery in complex biological systems. After undergrad, I plan to pursue my Ph.D. in mathematical biology and long term aspire for a career as an academic scientist.
Outside of the lab, I co-founded and am chief engineer for the Duke Applied Machine Learning group (DAML), which since its inception in 2019 has grown to be the largest student data science and software engineering firm in Duke and among all US universities, boasting over 200 members and near half a million dollars in funding. At DAML, we’ve developed applications for clients ranging from Durham small businesses to large companies such as Twitter and Coursera. This past summer specifically we organized the Phoenix Project, an 100% student run initiative which brought together 200 students to work on summer projects from 50 companies in response to COVID-19 internship loss. I personally oversee the software engineering division of the organization and run education and onboarding for new members with a focus on preparing students from all backgrounds learn the fundamentals of data science and machine learning through a beginner-friendly online course I co-wrote and developed at https://undergrad.ai. Additionally, I also serve as an engineer and software architect on a number of Duke startups such as Cydoc, which leverages AI to improve healthcare, and Woto, an ed-tech application to automate office hours management and provide data-science driven analytics to university educators and administrators, among others.
For me the AB, beyond just enabling me to attend a top university debt-free, has been a source of constant support for all my endeavors, both from the amazing people at OUSF and the community of my brilliant fellow scholars. I count many members of the AB among my best friends here at Duke and knowing them has enriched my Duke experience in more ways than I can possibly describe.