Nerd Wisdom

Here is a short formal bio:

I am a physicist by training, now working in the fields of AI and communications theory.

My Ph.D. (Princeton, 1990) was in theoretical physics, specifically the statistical mechanics of disordered systems. I continued research along these lines, but also started work in biophysics and evolutionary algorithms from 1990-1993, when I was a Junior Fellow at Harvard’s Society of Fellows.

In 1993, I switched gears and became a professional chess player and teacher. I hold the title of international master.

In 1997, I joined the web start-up Viaweb, where I helped develop the shopping search engine that has since become Yahoo! Shopping.

In 1998, I joined Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs, where I am a senior research scientist. I work on “probabilistic inference” algorithms, such as the famous “belief propagation” algorithm, and their applications in a variety of fields, including communications, signal processing, and artificial intelligence.

For more information, and lists of publications, you can visit my
official MERL web page or my slightly less official MERL web page.

For more information about this blog, visit the Welcome to Nerd Wisdom page.