komron’s stuff

i realized i don't talk much about what i actually do at brown. this is an attempt to fix that. if you have any questions, do text me at @kjaripov -- i'm happy to talk (time permitting). here goes nothing !! i study computer science at brown. i'm also applying to the concurrent masters program. if i get in, that means i will graduate with both a bachelors and masters degrees. for anyone wondering what a full upper-level cs workload looks like trying to do get this done, this semester i'm doing: computer science-related (these are required for my degree) - logic for systems: a course on modeling software systems using software on top of first order logic. check out a greedy coloring algorithm a friend and I modeled as a midsemester project. - prescriptive analytics: a graduate-level course in large-scale optimization problems. applications include truck routing for big delivery companies and more. as a first project in the course, we wrote a boolean satisfiability (SAT) solver, a report for which i also published here. - applied cryptography: using advanced cryptography concepts to create secure systems: e.g. messengers, authentications systems and more. our latest project is to implement a secure e-voting platform using zero-knowledge proofs. masters-program related (these are required classes outside of cs) - ancient egyptian hieroglyphics II: this is the second semester of a year-long sequence of learning ancient egyptian hieroglyphics. just two weeks ago, i traveled to the museum of fine arts in boston and presented this false door as a tour-guide, reading the inscriptions with grammatical analysis :) - face of earth: affectionately known at brown as "rocks for jocks", this is a relatively easy class which i don't really attend but have to do assignments + midterms for to fit within the 36-credit requirement for the concurrent masters. other - research: working with the programming languages lab at northeastern to help train large language models (think chatgpt) for generating code. - teaching assistant: roughly 10 hours a week as a TA for our introductory systems programming course (find me here hehe). next semester, i will be the head TA for formal proof and verification -- a class I loved and have written a cool final project for. this schedule means that, roughly, i am either eating food, hanging out with friends, working, or all of those combined -- all my waking hours, weekends included. there is so much stress and anxiety, always. but it is incredibly rewarding. i am obsessed with everything i do. burnout is real and it is a price i pay for knowing my limits, of which there are many. i am human and failure is an option.

time is the substance i am made of. time is a river which sweeps me along, but i am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but i am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but i am the fire. the world, unfortunately, is real; i, unfortunately, am Borges. -- Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings