Originally a philosophy major and then a math major, I received my PhD in applied math at the University of Minnesota in 2023. Driven by my interest in real-world, tangible problems, I joined a small healthcare startup as a data scientist after graduating, where I worked on classical ML and NLP problems, as well as with LLMs. Due to the small nature of the startup, I participated in all aspects of the deployment process, eventually joining the platform team. I then joined WWT, inspired by the collaborative culture of the MC group and the opportunity to learn multiple tech stacks by working on a wide range of projects.