Hi, I’m Nathan, a second-year PhD student in the Theory of Computation group at MIT, advised by the inimitable Ryan Williams. I did my undergrad at MIT as well. A list of papers I’ve coauthored can be found here. I’m currently interested in AI safety, both in theory and in practice. I have also worked on space-bounded complexity theory and graph algorithms.

Some things I like outside of math include:

• Quizbowl. I ran our clubs back in high school and undergrad; still appreciate trivia in moderate doses.
• Fiction and poetry. I enjoy all sorts of literature, maybe especially if it’s slightly weird. I also occasionally try to write — see my blog for some fiction, math exposition, and things in-between.
• Puzzles. I hunt with 17th Shard! I especially like puzzles involving cryptics or wordplay.
• Zumba. My ratio of “enthusiasm about dancing” to “dance ability” is extremely high. It makes me very happy to listen to loud music and jump around — I call this activity “zumba”, although maybe in standard usage “zumba” just refers to a special case of this.
• Walking. I like long walks, including proper hikes, meandering strolls in search of birds or mushrooms, or just plain “walk by the side of the road for 40 miles”. If you’re interested in joining any such activity, let me know!

If you made it to the end of this page, it’s possible you’d also be interested in a “miscellany” of old Nathan things. Maybe if you put a certain word into a certain textbox you could find some…