Welcome to my home page. I consider myself a curious and fortunate individual who is rather obsessed with solving problems. On a local level, I care about doing things that bring more meaning to people's lives; on a global level, I care about increasing the potential of humankind (that is, the potential for current and future generations to lead more meaningful lives and solve more problems they find important or interesting).
Our minds are narrative-making machines, and the narrative that's compelling to me is one of freedom. I want people to do things because they choose to do them; I want people to not do things because they choose not to do them. If people avoid doing things because they don't understand how to, or they think it's too difficult or even impossible, that feels profoundly tragic to me. This type of freedom is important on both the global and local levels: building new technologies and capabilities for humanity that seem insurmountably challenging, and ensuring these technologies make their way into tools and products that people can actually use to improve their lives. Nowhere are these limitations more salient than the brain, and so I decided to spend my time building better technologies for interfacing with our brains.
On top of practical considerations, I value knowledge for its own sake. There are arguments one could make about the unknown future applications of knowledge justifying its acquisition, but, personally, I simply find the story told about the universe through the truth and its pursuit to be a beautiful one.
My path through life is essentially like trying to find an integer \(x\) such that \(\alpha^x = \beta\) for cyclic group generator and element \(\alpha\) and \(\beta\), and recognizing that it can be rewritten as \(\alpha^j = \beta(\alpha^{-m})^i\) — I may not know exactly where I'm going, but I'm confident I can get there in time \(O(\sqrt{n})\). (Just a little group theory/cryptography humor, forgive me.)