Photo by Sebastian de Bone @ The Esplanades, Boston MA

Yes, that is my actual last name...

... and I'm not the only one with that name. There are a few folks in the States with the name, but in my case my family has been living in South-Africa for a couple of generations.

While it's quite common in the States to abbreviate names, I prefer the full 'Kenneth'. I also use he/him pronouns.

Besides my research interests, I like to think of myself as a math dilettante; I in particular enjoy discrete mathematics.
I listen, play and write music; my taste includes (but is not limited to) pop, (experimental) hip-hop, classical (Baroque and (late) Romantic), and metal.
I enjoy both working out and bouldering.
I dabble in a partner dance called Zouk.
I also dabble in certain skill toys, think of juggling, yoyo'ing and diabolo.
More recently I picked up a rhythm game called Sound Voltex.

I am also interested in STEM outreach; feel free to send me an e-mail if you are looking for someone to give a talk!

Photo by Mengying Hu @ Hamburg

Miscellanea

Bill Thurston's thoughts on mathematics, here and here.
What do open sets in topology axiomatize/why open sets are closed under arbitrary union but not arbitrary intersection
Inclusion-exclusion as a Möbius inversion on the poset of subsets of a set.

Quotes

"The combinations that can be formed with numbers and symbols are an infinite multitude. In this thicket how shall we choose those that are worthy of our attention? Shall we be guided only by whimsy? (…) [This] would undoubtedly carry us far from each other, and we would rapidly cease to understand each other. But that is only the minor side of the problem. Not only will physics perhaps prevent us from getting lost, but it will also protect us from a more fearsome danger of turning around forever in circles. History [shows that] physics has not only forced us to choose [from the multitude of problems which arise], but it has also imposed on us directions that would never have been dreamed of otherwise (…) What could be more useful!" -- Henri Poincaré

"Combinatorics is an honest subject. No adèles, no sigma-algebras. You count balls in a box, and you either have the right number or you haven't. You get the feeling that the result you have discovered is forever, because it's concrete. Other branches of mathematics are not so clear-cut. Functional analysis of infinite dimensional spaces is never fully convincing; you don't get a feeling of having done an honest day's work. Don't get the wrong idea --- combinatorics is not just putting balls into boxes. Counting finite sets can be a highbrow undertaking, with sophisticated techniques." -- Gian-Carlo Rota

"Mathematics is being lazy. Mathematics is letting the principles do the work for you so that you do not have to do the work for yourself.'' -- George Pólya

”A leader in the theory of pseudo-parabolic partial differential equations in quasi-convex domains will not stoop to being understood by specialists in quasi-parabolic partial differential equations in pseudo-convex domains.” -- Gian-Carlo Rota

Here's two small games I made...

For people not familiar with quantum or math, just think of these as fun games, where (hopefully!) part of the fun is trying to explore what the rules of the games are. It turns out that these games are closely connected to the combinatorics hiding behind stabilizer entanglement, something I am interested in better understanding.

For the experts: the first game is about minimizing the number of edges in graph states up to local complementations (in particular, when the problem is restricted to so-called circle graph states). For related research, see here.

The second game depicts Eulerian multimatroids, which determine the measurement statistics of certain stabilizer states, see here.

If you want to play them on mobile, click here or here.

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