Nerd Wisdom

You can now find my publications and professional information here.

Here is a short bio:

I am a physicist by training, now working on algorithms for AI and machine learning.

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 worked 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.

In 2011, I left my position as a distinguished research scientist at MERL to join Disney Research Boston. I can be reached there by using mylastname at disneyresearch dot com (I trust you can make the obvious replacements).