I am a first-year Ph.D. student in the mathematics department at UC Berkeley. I am jointly advised by Bernd Sturmfels and Serkan Hosten. My current research interests are in nonlinear algebra, in particular metric algebraic geometry and algebraic distance optimization.

In 2025, I graduated from the blended BS/MS mathematics degree program at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, where I was a Frost Research Scholar in the Bailey College of Science and Mathematics.

Here is my CV.

Activities

2026

• July 9-11: attending the workshop: An Invitation to Analytics Combinatorics at the MPI MiS.

• May 22-July 31: visiting the Nonlinear Algebra Group of the MPI MiS.

• May 18-22: presenting at Fun with Algorithms conference in Porquerolles, France on my work with Aaron Williams about the Quaternary Gray code and Ziggu puzzles. Read more here.

• April 13-17: visited the Nonlinear Algebra Group of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences and attended the Workshop on Metric Algebraic Geometry: Starting Local.

Research

I have conducted research into moduli spaces of triangles with Eric Brussel, funded by the Frost Fund in the Cal Poly Bailey College. I have also conducted research into Gray codes, a subject at the intersection of theoretical computer science and discrete mathematics, with Aaron Williams as part of the NSF SMALL REU.

• My master’s thesis, On Diffeomorphism Groups of Surfaces, was advised by Patrick Orson. The slides from my thesis defense are available here. I made this presentation entirely in IPE, inspired by this helpful blog post.
• Eric Brussel advised my undergraduate senior project, On Moduli Spaces of Triangles.

Preprints & Publications

Journal Articles

• The Torus of Triangles (with Eric Brussel). arXiv:2303.11446. (to appear in Involve, a Journal of Mathematics).

Conference Proceedings

• The Quaternary Gray Code and Ziggu Puzzles. (with Aaron Williams). Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Fun with Algorithms, 2026. 10.4230/LIPIcs.FUN.2026.22.

• Exhaustive Generation of Pattern-Avoiding s-Words (with Samuel Buick, Amos Lastmann, Kunal Pal, Helen Qian, Sam Tacheny, Aaron Williams, Leah Williams, and Yulin Zhai). Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Permutation Patterns, 2025. Available here.

Preprints

• The Stack of Triangles Up to Similarity (with Eric Brussel, Elijah Guptill, & Kelly Lyle). arXiv:2408.07792. (under review).

Posters

• Three Moduli Spaces of Triangles. (with Eric Brussel, Elijah Guptill, & Kelly Lyle).
• Poncelet Families and the Triangle of Triangles. (with Eric Brussel).

Teaching

At UC Berkeley:

• Fall 2026: I will be a Berkeley Connect fellow. This is a great mentoring opportunity for Berkeley undergraduate math majors.
• Spring 2026: No teaching, UC Berkeley Chancellor’s fellowship.
• Fall 2025: Graduate Student Instructor (GSI) for Math 51: Calculus I taught by Ko Woon Ohm.

During my master’s degree at Cal Poly, I taught as a graduate teaching associate & instructor of record.

• Spring 2025: Math 221: Calculus for Business and Economics
• Winter 2025: Math 118: Precalculus
• Fall 2024: Math 118: Precalculus