About

I think about problems related to computation and geometry — broadly defined. And I build things that work. These days, I work on practical secure systems built from probabilistic proofs. On some nights, I find myself dreaming about arithmetic geometry and topology.

At Stanford, I studied maths and CS under the General Yaowu Wang scholarship, where I researched Floer theory and exotic manifolds. I like where algebra meets analysis in geometry. This led me to Floer homotopy. I wrote a thesis on computing pushforwards of complex-oriented cohomology.

I hacked on distributed systems and embedded OS stuff. Some of my best Stanford memories come from eating pizzas while hacking on bare-metal Raspberry Pis in Dawson Engler’s CS340lx past 12am.

Before California, I went to St Paul’s School in London, where I liked to sneak out of school to visit art galleries and make portraits. Some of my old art is here. I spent a lot of time reading novels and plays in the school library across the River Thames – Kafka, Beckett’s trilogy, Marlowe. My favourite throw is uchi mata.

Until I was 15, I grew up in China — in a place where I played Go at 6 and earned yondan at 11. I quit Go because I thought it was just pattern matching. My dad insisted computers would never beat human players. We were both wrong, but AlphaGo came for him first.