Ryan A.
Robinett

Candidate for PhD in Computer Science
University of Chicago

Manifold Learning,
Sparse Neural Networks,
& Caffeine

Howdy! I am a second-year PhD student in the University of Chicago's
Department of Computer Science. I am also a 2019 National Science
Foundation Fellow and an avid consumer of caffeinated beverages.

I earned my BS in Mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology. At MIT, I had the privilege of doing biomathematical
research with the Meyer Lab at the Koch Institute for Integrative
Cancer Research and later doing work on sparse neural network
topologies with Dr. Jeremy Kepner at MIT Beaver Works.

My current research at U Chicago is focused on dimensionality reduction
and first-order methods for optimization on manifolds
constructed from point clouds using moving least-squares.
This work is being done in collaboration with Prof. Lorenzo Orecchia in the Department of Computer Science and Prof. Samantha Riesenfeld in the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering.