Hi! I am a professor in the CSE department in UC San Diego. I am part of the Theory of Computation group and help run the theory seminar.
I have a broad interest in theoretical computer science and mathematics. In particular computational complexity, randomness and pseudo-randomness, algebraic constructions, coding theory, additive combinatorics and high-dimensional geometry. My research is funded by NSF and a Simons investigator award.
If you are a student and would like me to write you a recommendation letter, please read this first.
Teaching (previous years):
- CSE 105, Theory of Computation, Fall 2025
- CSE 291T, Communication Complexity, Winter 2026
- CSE 200, Computational Complexity, Spring 2026
- CSE 209A, Theory seminar, Spring 2026
Surveys:
- Recent Advances on the Log Rank Conjecture, Bulletin of EATCS, 2014
- Additive Combinatorics and its Applications in Theoretical Computer Science, Theory of Computing, graduate survey #8, 2019
- Higher order Fourier analysis and applications, with Hamed Hatami and Pooya Hatami, Foundations and Trends in Theoretical Computer Science, 2019
- Models of computation between decision trees and communication, with Sasha Knop, Sam McGuire and Weiqiang Yuan, SIGACT news, Volume 52, No. 2, 2021
Current PhD students:
- Farzan Byramji (co-advised with Russell Impagliazzo)
- Anthony Ostuni (co-advised with Daniel Kane)
Current postdocs:
Previous students/postdocs:
- Shay Moran (2018) → faculty at the Technion
- Kaave Hosseini (2019) → postdoc at CMU → faculty at U. of Rochester
- Jiapeng Zhang (2019) → postdoc at Harvard → faculty at USC
- Sankeerth Rao Karingula (2020) → Palo Alto Networks → Google Research
- Sam McGuire (2022)
- Amy Kanne (2022)
- Gaurav Mahajan (2023) → postdoc at Yale
- Max Hopkins (2024) → postdoc at IAS and Princeton
- Zach Chase (2025) → postdoc at Kent
Professional activities:
- Program Committees: SOFSEM 2012, RANDOM 2013, CCC 2014, FOCS 2015, CCC 2017, CCC 2018 (local chair), ISIT 2018, ITCS 2019 (local chair+PC member), FOCS 2019, CCC 2022 (PC chair), ITCS 2023, FOCS 2023, SOSA 2024, SODA 2025, RANDOM 2025, FOCS 2025, SODA 2026, ITCS 2026
- Scientific/Editorial Boards: Computational Complexity Foundation (president), Theory of Computing (ToC) (editor in chief), Journal of the ACM, ACM Transacations on Computation Theory (TOCT), Forum of Math Pi and Sigma, Electronic Colloquium on Computational Complexity (ECCC)
- Past: SIGACT Executive Committee, Computational Complexity Foundation (treasurer), Prague summer school on discrete mathematics, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory (ITIT)
Some theory-related websites that I help maintain:
- CS theory events (list+calender of workshops, conferences, schools, etc): cstheory-events.org
- CS theory jobs: (students, postdocs, faculty) cstheory-jobs.org
