I use this page to share, informally, what I can bring to the table and how I contribute as a person, a mathematician and a researcher.
A short biography...
Born in Vietnam, I attended Le Hong Phong High School for the Gifted (yes, it's an actual name) where I somehow managed the highest entrance score. Arriving in the U.S. in my teens, I found that my family’s insistence on a cosmetology life was hardly my own. I left home to pursue higher education, transferred to UCLA, and there met Terry Tao, whose recommendation opened the door to UC Berkeley. (It seems a curious pattern of fortune in my life that I repeatedly find myself learning from mathematicians of foundational renown. Fortune in fortune, I suppose, though I wish the universe had been equally generous with my money luck.) Near graduation, the growing allure of data science and machine learning drew my attention. My first postdoc was a mismatch, compounded by the pandemic, but the second was an improvement. I now live in Vienna and have come to appreciate the peculiar satisfaction of an intense workload.
River has bends, life has phases. While my track record in the grand experiment of life is patchy at best, and I am still striving toward what I take to be my mission, there are a few select traits I am almost proud enough to mention…
Speed reader. I analyzed papers on graph Laplacian convergence and stable phase retrieval in a matter of days, polished off entire book on sampling theory in single day, and trained myself in high dimensional probability over two months.
Focus, fast and furious. I finished a two-hour ODE final in one hour, and a week-long honors linear algebra take-home in two days. UCLA's fast-paced environment trained me for this. In these distracted times, the capacity to concentrate has become something of a superpower. I've even tackled a couple of hours of math in noisy coffee shops—though maybe I should draw the line.
Workaholic. I am, if one insists on labels, wedded to my career, and I rather enjoy the intensity of it. One week-long dynamical systems workshop had me running from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. each day—and, remarkably, I lived to tell the tale.
On a more personal level, I am a proficient fan of comedy and (blood-curling) roller coaster. I'm happy to be at the intersection of math, science and AI, where depth meets breadth, the pace is brisk, and each day delivers something new to explore.