While at MIT, I received both a Master's of Science degree and a Doctor of Science degree, both in Computer Science. For my doctoral dissertation, I investigated interactive conversational techniques on a smart whiteboard invovling bi-directional speaking and drawing. My Master's work entailed designing and creating the user interface to an autonomous robotic forklift. To read more about these projects, check out my Past Projects page.

Here's a list of the courses I took while at MIT, by semester, in chronological order.

Fall 2007

• Machine Learning gave me a new appreciation for probability and statistics (not to mention some real knowledge on the subjects) and taught me a lot of machine learning. If you are interested in Machine Learning, take it. I would recommend, however, that you make sure you have enough time to dig in, because it's quite challenging.
• Database Systems was also challenging, though not nearly as much as Machine Learning. It was my first course dealing with databases and I found the assignments quite interesting.

Spring 2008

• Advanced Graphics was an extremely fun course. I made (yet another) ray tracer and (yet another) simulation of Newtonian physics.
• Randomness and Computation taught me a lot about randomness's relationship to computation. This course gave me new insights into algorithmic analysis and the ways randomness can improve your algorithm's average running time.

Fall 2008

• Advanced Natural Language Processing was my first attempt at an NLP course. I learned a lot about state of the art NLP methods and did my final project on translation-based noun-finding. The basic idea was that since all nouns are capitalized in German and only proper nouns are capitalized in English, perhaps using translation from German to English could improve the accuracy of noun detection in English.

Spring 2009 – Fall 2011

• This was a long period of focusing on my research. I also interned at Google NYC over the summer of 2011.

Spring 2012

• Finance Theory I was quite informative. I learned that finance theory is relatively straightforward, and that economics still has a long way to go before we can say we fully understand it (much like most research disciplines, actually).

Fall 2012

• Finance Theory II was the final course required to finish my Finanace minor.
• Introduction to Software Engineering TA'ing was great; I found teaching very rewarding. Unfortunately, it was hard to balance the requirements of TA'ing with the demands of research. With luck, I'll be able to teach at a college level in the future.

Spring 2013 – Summer 2014

• I spent the rest of my time at MIT finishing my dissertation. The fruits of my labor are recorded in my Sc.D. Thesis.