I’ve never been so happy sleeping so little. For five days this November, I taxed my mind and my laptop crunching through education policy data on the way to submitting an entry in the 2017 Data Open Championships, organized by Correlation One and Citadel. » Read More
Category Archives: Activities
Winners of the 2017 Data Open Championship!
Monday is a dizzying mashup of adrenaline-tinted memories. Walking the floors of the New York Stock Exchange, watching old-time traders tell about the bullpen days. Sitting in the palatial elegance of the NYSE Board Room, listening to Ken Griffin share stories of teamwork, » Read More
Devcon3 Debrief
I was honored to speak at Devcon3, the Ethereum Developers’ Conference, on my research on coordinating decentralized optimization with blockchains.
The attendees were a strange mix: 30-50% of the attendees were speculators who knew nothing about blockchains, but were frantically trying to understand the asset which had ballooned in their portfolio. » Read More
Glimpses into the Quantitative Finance industry
Since winning the Correlation One / Citadel datathon in February, I’ve been fascinated by data science jobs in the Finance sector, and the idea of applying my strategic bidding research to equity markets where trading volumes are greater, physical constraints are looser, » Read More
CCTA 2017 Debrief
I just got back from the First IEEE Conference on Control Technology and Applications, which replaces the previous Multi-conference on Systems and Control.
First, having a conference in Hawaii is fantastic: morning snorkeling missions before the conference started, » Read More
NSF I-Corps Closing Notes
As the clapping faded, Viktor’s voice rang out over the audience. “…As you navigate the traps and landmines ahead I want you to remember one thing: hustle beats smarts, when the smarts don’t hustle.”
Congratulations. You are now I-Corps alumni. » Read More
Get Out of the Building!
Interviewing 100 stakeholders in 5 weeks has reshaped how I think of cleantech innovation- and research. Our eCalCharge startup was initially founded to commercialize the research of my labmate Caroline LeFloch on load shaping and frequency regulation using electric vehicles. » Read More
Lobbying Congress for Science
After finishing my qualifying exams, I had just a few days at home before leaving for the East Coast to take part in the Coalition for National Science Funding’s Exhibition Day on Capitol Hill. Part of a contingent with representation from 5 of the University of California campuses, » Read More
Qualifying Exams – Done!
Every PhD student dreads Qualifying Exams, the big checkpoint en route to the dissertation. In Berkeley’s college of engineering, they have particular weight: as there isn’t a thesis defense, the 3-hour oral Qualifying Exams is the one big check on your research progress. » Read More
NSF Innovation-Corps Kickoff
I just got back from 3 hurried days in San Diego for the kickoff of the Innovation Corps training, an entrepreneurship bootcamp for university researchers funded by the National Science Foundation with the goal of improving the commercialization of NSF-funded research. » Read More