I am currently enjoying life as a computer science graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. I did my undergraduate degree in computer science at the University of Virginia (B.S. 2010), and my high school education at Thomas Jefferson HSST in Alexandria, VA (2007). My research interests are in distributed systems and datacenters, see my research page for details on my academic projects and papers.

As clichéd and hopelessly idealistic as it may sound, my goal in life is to change the world for the better. I'm heavily impact driven, and any future career I choose will involve solving real world problems that tangibly affect people's lives. I also keep a bucket list of personal growth items that I want to accomplish. It's still short, but I take completing and updating it pretty seriously. It's a way of putting life in perspective and focusing on what is worthwhile and meaningful.

Work experience

During undergrad, I interned twice at NavigationArts, an enterprise web development company in McLean, VA, and once at SPAWAR Systems Center in San Diego, CA, working on low-cost, long-range, ship-to-ship wireless communication with commodity 802.11 parts. As such, I have expertise in most aspects of web development, and consider myself a pretty good systems builder too. I still take the occasional web development contract, but at the time being, graduate school is my primary focus.

Other activities

Outside of school and work, I still keep myself distracted. I've taken up biking since coming to Berkeley, but my first love is for rowing, a sport I did for four years in high school with moderate championship success. I haven't had time to take it up again, but I'm looking forward to rowing on the Bay. These days I'm also teaching myself guitar, and I have a few years experience in each of piano and clarinet. I read for pleasure semi-regularly (philosophy, sci-fi, fantasy, history), and wish I had the time to make this a regular habit. My final passion is food: I'm an amateur cook (and dinner party organizer), and a closet foodie.