Mathew Alex

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About me

Aspiring physicist, machine learning engineer in the past, loves it when physics meets computer science.

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There is almost nothing in the world that I do not find interesting: Shakespeare, drawing, airplanes, computer science, the human body, physics and mathematics, you name it! I have tremendous respect for those who know what they want in life, yet I enjoy my fate with a passion even though sometimes I feel like I am paying for my breadth with depth. I chose physics because it has the most universal underpinnings, having to do something with everything. Yet I wholeheartedly recommend all children to be thoroughly educated in literature and history. I am a pragmatic physicist, learning as much and sometimes as little mathematics as required to describe nature, only talking about measurable quantities and not caring about interpretations of quantum mechanics.

In 2020, I took a break from physics to spend some time in the industry. I worked with some of the challenging aspects of machine learning, particularly information retrieval from patents and learning from a few examples, catering to corporate customers. I knew neural networks are magical from when I first heard of them in a 3blue1brown video. The utility justifies exploration; the pursuit is similar to differential equations; both are trying to abstract out human intuition about the world in a computational form.

I turned my life around after university, learned as much physics as I could, qualified as one of the top 100 in the highest tier graduate research scholarship in India, got into my country's best university for Ph.D. (the Indian Institute of Science), had a job that allowed me to make a difference in the world and had my coveted full scholarship for MS at a US university. If it happened years back, any of these would have made my life, but we change when we stare into the abyss. Now I am enrolled in an MSc in Canada, doing research in symmetries of partial differential equations.

Human endeavor should be limitless; we are built to be spent. A great love is a flawed love. I feel full, and my adventure is plenty.



2022 Mathew Alex