Tanishq Mathew Abraham - Their Life and Work Eps 1

00:00:00.000 | Hi, this is Jeremy Howard and this is episode one of my new podcast, Their Life and Work.

00:00:09.000 | In this podcast, I'm going to be interviewing people who inspire and interest me.

00:00:16.240 | I want to find out all about their life and work because I'm just fascinated by these

00:00:24.840 | interesting and inspiring people.

00:00:28.600 | Why do a podcast?

00:00:30.280 | Well, partly I guess it's a bit of an excuse, an excuse to talk to people that I really

00:00:35.640 | want to talk in depth with.

00:00:37.960 | But partly because it's kind of how I've lived my life, I always look for things that are

00:00:45.000 | interesting and inspiring to do on the basis that maybe other people will find the work

00:00:53.240 | I create interesting and inspiring as a result.

00:00:56.760 | So I figured, yeah, if I find these people interesting and inspiring, maybe some of you

00:01:01.320 | will as well.

00:01:03.400 | I've been lucky enough to meet a lot of fascinating people in my life.

00:01:07.940 | And I guess that's because I've had a perhaps unusually diverse background in terms of what

00:01:15.600 | I've done and where I've been.

00:01:19.000 | I founded five successful companies, two in Australia and three in the US, including in

00:01:28.880 | medical AI, a company also called Kaggle in the data science space.

00:01:35.880 | And nowadays my focus is in deep learning.

00:01:39.000 | I run a research lab called Fast AI, as well as also being a honorary professor at the

00:01:45.080 | University of Queensland.

00:01:48.680 | I spent 10 years of my life recently in San Francisco, although originally I grew up in

00:01:54.480 | Australia to where I've now returned and yeah, certainly got to meet a lot of really interesting

00:02:01.320 | people during that time in San Francisco where interesting people seem to flock, which is

00:02:08.100 | something really great about it.

00:02:12.040 | Because I'm a dad of a seven-year-old lovely girl who we homeschool.

00:02:20.720 | So you'll probably get a sense that the kind of stuff I'm likely to be interested in talking

00:02:26.280 | about during these podcasts, the kind of people I'm likely to be interested talking to might

00:02:30.200 | skew a bit towards folks involved in AI and tech and startups and education and homeschooling.

00:02:41.580 | Which has lots of links into my first guest.

00:02:50.240 | So for episode one, I'm going to talk to one of the most inspiring people I know and his

00:02:58.240 | name is Tanishk Abraham.

00:03:01.600 | Tanishk is only 19 and yet he's already achieved an extraordinary amount in his life.

00:03:10.000 | I feel sure he's going to achieve a whole lot more in the coming years and so I feel very

00:03:16.080 | proud that I almost get to be like his first biographer here, telling you a bit about this

00:03:22.480 | amazing person and how he's got to be where he is.

00:03:27.760 | So what makes Tanishk interesting?

00:03:30.280 | Well I mean apart from anything else, consider who he is right now and what he's doing.

00:03:35.160 | He's 19 years old and he is about to finish his PhD which is quite extraordinary.

00:03:41.720 | And he is about to start his first job as the founding CEO of MEDAC, a very hot medical

00:03:52.400 | AI research group, connected to stability AI.

00:03:57.060 | You might have come across them through all the recent kerfuffle about stable diffusion,

00:04:01.880 | the very exciting models that can create pictures just from a description.

00:04:07.560 | So Tanishk is doing very exciting research and very exciting work.

00:04:12.200 | His research is in the area of applying AI to medicine and specifically to medical imaging

00:04:18.360 | in pathology.

00:04:20.360 | This is an area I've actually done quite a bit of work in myself.

00:04:23.640 | So I've got a lot of connections with Tanishk, not only because he himself was homeschooled

00:04:30.040 | and I'm now a homeschooling dad so I'm very interested in that aspect of things.

00:04:33.800 | Also the fact I started a medical AI company, in fact the first company to focus on applying

00:04:40.240 | deep learning to medicine and this is the area of his research and the area of the company

00:04:47.240 | that he will be the founding CEO of very soon.

00:04:53.440 | And also the fact that actually the way I first got to know him is that he was a student

00:04:58.600 | of FAST AI, the courses that I create through my research and teaching group, fast.ai.

00:05:08.060 | And so I was quite struck when I first met Tanishk a few years ago.

00:05:14.240 | He was one of the youngest people to be doing our courses, our courses are really actually

00:05:19.600 | quite advanced and they're generally designed for people with quite a bit of background

00:05:23.360 | in computer programming and a pretty solid understanding of mathematics.

00:05:29.440 | And here he was blitzing our most sophisticated courses as a teenager, in fact probably he

00:05:36.920 | must have been maybe 15 or 16 at the time so that was very striking.

00:05:42.400 | And then I discovered that he's actually at that age he had started doing a PhD in an

00:05:49.160 | area I was very interested in with a very interesting supervisor actually somebody who

00:05:53.480 | I had already known and spoke to during my work.

00:06:00.600 | So I was very privileged to get to meet him and I will say over the years that have passed

00:06:05.240 | since then I've really been amazed to see how he has matured into such a thoughtful

00:06:14.440 | young man and I have the privilege of now getting to work with him and we do research

00:06:23.120 | together.

00:06:24.120 | So if you're interested in finding out more about what makes somebody like this tick and

00:06:30.120 | how do they get to be in such an extraordinary position at such an extraordinary age then

00:06:35.280 | you will definitely enjoy this interview.

00:06:39.640 | His story starts in a sense actually when he was much younger he was actually getting national

00:06:49.400 | attention even as a nine year old.

00:06:54.720 | He did some amazing things as a very young chap.

00:06:59.080 | For example here he is giving the youngest ever talk at NASA.

00:07:06.760 | My poster topic is about using citizen science programs and studying the number of topography.

00:07:13.760 | The two citizen science programs I talk about is Moon Zoo which is from Zooniverse a citizen

00:07:21.640 | science web portal and Moon Mappers which is from Cosmo Plus a developing citizen science

00:07:29.560 | web portal.

00:07:32.240 | So by the age of nine Tanish could already been doing some college subjects for a couple

00:07:38.040 | of years and this definitely came to the attention of a bunch of folks and as a nine year old

00:07:44.960 | in fact he was profiled in a YouTube series called Prodigies.

00:07:52.080 | Here's a clip from that to get a sense of what he was doing back then.

00:07:56.960 | We finished chapter 20 but it's a very important chapter so let's review that today.

00:08:02.640 | So anyone can tell me what are the main types of galaxies?

00:08:06.040 | Elliptical.

00:08:07.040 | Elliptical galaxies and spiral.

00:08:11.400 | About one year ago Tanis became my student in astronomy 300 and he ended up the class

00:08:16.520 | being the student with the highest grade.

00:08:18.960 | Which ones are the most common ones in the early universe?

00:08:21.040 | What about today and what kind of galaxies do I find most often?

00:08:27.200 | How many people do you know at the age of seven or eight they can discuss the expansion

00:08:31.160 | of the universe?

00:08:32.160 | He is different in a positive way.

00:08:34.720 | The most fun thing for him is learning so sometimes when people ask what do you do for

00:08:39.080 | a fun time?

00:08:40.080 | He says I just learn and then people just can't understand that.

00:08:44.160 | Tanish was in my geology lecture and lab class at American River College.

00:08:48.920 | Professor Stirling is actually the one who helped me get into college.

00:08:54.200 | I've taken Tanisha into my wing because he has such potential.

00:08:59.080 | His challenges are that he is at an intellect level here but yet he's still a very kind

00:09:06.160 | and happy eight year old.

00:09:08.760 | Another thing that really brought him to the attention of folks all around America as a

00:09:12.640 | nine year old was he was part of the TV show called Child Genius.

00:09:18.000 | Here is Tanisha being introduced on Child Genius.

00:09:22.520 | So here's my actual high school diploma.

00:09:25.960 | When you meet your competitors though are you going to hide and let you graduate from

00:09:29.240 | high school?

00:09:30.240 | Why should I keep it a secret?

00:09:31.320 | It's already like almost everybody knows it.

00:09:33.440 | Yeah since I just graduated from high school President Obama sent me a letter.

00:09:39.440 | We're running a workspace and room space here putting up all his trophies and newspaper

00:09:44.320 | articles.

00:09:45.320 | Joking me we say we need a museum now for displaying all these things.

00:09:49.800 | He started taking college classes when he was seven years old.

00:09:56.280 | I started going to American River College I've got almost 45 units.

00:10:00.720 | I may only be 10 but I've done some really cool stuff.

00:10:06.720 | His appearance on Child Genius even ended up with him appearing in talk shows such as Conan

00:10:13.800 | O'Brien where he got to show off some of his science jokes.

00:10:19.800 | You have jokes you have them with you I'm told.

00:10:22.080 | You brought some jokes.

00:10:23.080 | Yes I brought some jokes.

00:10:24.080 | This will be the first jokes we've heard tonight.

00:10:26.240 | Let's uh let's uh can we can we hear your jokes okay so these are the kind of jokes

00:10:31.120 | you like because they're about yeah I've got some science jokes so okay all right let's

00:10:36.640 | hope you understand them okay the first joke is okay so why can't you trust atoms why can't

00:10:53.560 | you trust atoms I don't know because they make up everything but I think part of what

00:11:05.520 | has made Tunis such a tough and tenacious young man is that his interest in learning

00:11:14.320 | required fighting at every step there seem to always be this assumption that any kid

00:11:20.720 | who really wants to learn must have no life elsewhere or must be getting pushed around

00:11:27.600 | by their parents or whatever he gave a Ted talk as a kid in which he started to talk

00:11:36.360 | about some of this here's a sense of of what he was dealing with when I started out at

00:11:43.920 | seven taking college classes was just for fun later on I decided to get an associate

00:11:50.360 | degree in science and then transfer to a four-year university as an advanced education student

00:11:58.600 | you can only take up to two classes per semester and you'll last on priority for registration

00:12:04.600 | it's a struggle getting into the classes you want so far I've completed about 30 units

00:12:12.320 | but I still have trouble convincing colleges that I'm old enough to become a full-time

00:12:17.160 | student I wonder why that is well here's a reason I hear often I should enjoy childhood

00:12:26.840 | and have fun for me learning about particle physics is fun but I have other kinds of fun

00:12:35.020 | as well in reality I'm the one constantly reminding my parents that I want to learn

00:12:41.600 | more and more now the reason I'm inspired by to niche is not by what he did as a ten

00:12:49.680 | year old by but by who he is now he's somebody I work closely with we chat many times every

00:12:58.120 | week and I've known him for quite a few years and he's one of the most tenacious and hard

00:13:07.020 | working and thoughtful people I know and so I thought yeah I can't think of anybody better

00:13:17.500 | to start this podcast series with and I think hopefully by the end of this interview you'll

00:13:22.560 | have a sense of why this is somebody that I really wanted to get to know and to more

00:13:26.920 | deeply understand their life and work so without further ado here is my interview with Tanisha

00:13:33.200 | Abraham all right hello and welcome Tanisha Abraham thank you so much for joining us you

00:13:41.400 | are my first guest on this podcast which is both a blessing and a curse a blessing because

00:13:47.920 | you're the first guest on the podcast and a curse because every podcast looks back to

00:13:52.480 | episode one and says oh my god all the things I got wrong back in those days so thank you

00:13:57.200 | for helping launch us and being a bit of a guinea pig here well yeah thank you for having

00:14:03.120 | me it's a I'm very excited for this and yeah be hopefully be a very fun experience and

00:14:09.000 | hopefully there'll be many more episodes to come up so well maybe this would be so good

00:14:14.320 | that people will be like no you don't need to do another episode that was the atomic

00:14:17.960 | ideal of a podcast interview and everything down downhill from there so just stop yeah

00:14:26.720 | so Tanisha yeah I mean just tell us a bit about what you're doing in your life right

00:14:34.640 | now yeah so I'm a PhD candidate at UC Davis in biomedical engineering my research is focused

00:14:46.240 | on applying deep learning to microscopy and pathology so you know medical AI applications

00:14:52.480 | and yeah I've also been working part-time at stability AI also working on various AI

00:15:01.840 | research projects and medical AI projects yeah that's kind of where I am right now it's

00:15:07.640 | been quite busy but also very interesting and exciting to be I guess working at the

00:15:13.680 | forefront of AI research so I think that's very exciting and of course when you say PhD

00:15:19.920 | you know you're actually getting pretty close right so yeah yeah I'm planning to finish

00:15:25.860 | sometime around May so that's the plan so it's coming really close it's like you know

00:15:31.400 | six months from now so you know it's like oh yeah time was starting to kind of wrap

00:15:36.600 | up is like trying to finish up the papers that I have it's like so it's yeah it's it's

00:15:40.920 | getting close yeah well congrats and good luck on that so at the if you do finish in

00:15:49.760 | May how old will you be at that point? I will still be 19 so my birthday's in June so be

00:15:58.360 | right before my birthday so I'll still be at 19 so yeah okay so yeah I mean everything

00:16:03.880 | you described you know makes you a very interesting person to talk to from a vocational point of

00:16:13.560 | view anyway but doing doing all that at the age of 19 I think is particularly interesting

00:16:22.840 | and I both like do you want to talk about that but almost also kind of don't I do in

00:16:28.440 | the sense that like I do think it's really interesting and I think I would love to hear

00:16:33.880 | more about it but I also don't want to pigeonhole you being like yeah you know you're you know

00:16:45.080 | X I guess you're not a child anymore so X child genius slash prodigy but like yeah the

00:16:51.120 | work you're doing is just to be clear I think it's extremely valuable and interesting independently

00:16:58.320 | of the fact that you're 19 but it's particularly interesting if you're 19 if that does that

00:17:05.720 | make sense? No yeah that makes a lot of sense like I mean I kind of struggle with the same

00:17:09.960 | thing it's like yeah like this part of the apartment is like yeah like I guess I'm kind

00:17:16.400 | of known for this sort of you know how I've been as a child prodigy or whatever but then

00:17:22.560 | also like you know kind of want to also be known as you know this you know good AI researcher

00:17:29.120 | or a good yeah just a good researcher you know making you know yeah making a difference

00:17:32.560 | that way so but like I also appreciate the sort of background and a half right so it's

00:17:38.840 | like the sort of balance of you know yeah I guess who I am as a person like like yeah

00:17:44.920 | and how I represented it's like so I think there's a kind of a balance there where like

00:17:48.760 | yeah I definitely don't want to be pigeonholed it's just you know but like also yeah yeah

00:17:54.520 | I mean also and we'll talk about this more later but like I get the impression that you're

00:17:59.840 | very much a product of or a proud part of a family unit which has been you know very

00:18:10.400 | much a part of your path to this point you know and your sister is also doing amazing

00:18:16.480 | things and in a sense to kind of wipe away the fact you did all this at you know at a

00:18:23.760 | young age would almost be to ignore the amazing work and support that your family is provided

00:18:30.840 | does that yeah yeah I mean I think I think my parents kind of that's kind of the perspective

00:18:36.680 | that my parents have I think on this thing so there's also yeah I mean of course they've

00:18:41.080 | you know they've nailed a lot of sacrifices and they've put in a lot of work to help me

00:18:46.120 | reach where I am right now so and the same is true of course of mine for my sister so

00:18:52.480 | I think yeah you know they're also you know very proud of of the accomplished accomplishments

00:18:57.500 | that we've done it's to young age so yeah that's a that's a that's definitely a huge

00:19:02.400 | factor and I think yeah it's of course let's let's talk about your sister for a moment

00:19:08.120 | so yeah so yeah what's your sister's name and what's she doing and how does she and

00:19:13.840 | yeah tell me tell me about that too yeah my sister she my sister's Chiara Abraham she

00:19:20.400 | is a she's 16 years old and right now she's doing her master's at Indiana University in

00:19:28.240 | both the performance and so yeah she you know she's she's also kind of a job she's a job

00:19:37.600 | biology in her own right in terms of she's been singing since she was about like maybe

00:19:43.480 | like five years old and you know she she's gone with professional vocal training and

00:19:49.080 | you know she's sung in many different venues she's for example sung the national anthem

00:19:55.000 | at you know very like at the Giants game S of Johns and you know at various different

00:20:01.600 | locations and then she's sung at different concerts and like of course like Carnegie

00:20:07.000 | Hall and in there's like the there's this big music hall in Austria music behind it's

00:20:14.680 | like various halls that she's she's also sung and yeah she's she's a very good singer she's

00:20:22.320 | interested in opera singing so that's kind of what she's pursuing right now at Indiana

00:20:27.200 | University Jacobs School of Music it's like one of the the best music schools in America

00:20:35.360 | for especially for the sort of opera music so you must be very proud of your little sister

00:20:41.320 | Tanishka yeah yeah it could see I'm just talking on and on about her no that's great I love

00:20:47.480 | it I mean yeah I yeah of course I I met you guys and your parents when you came to San

00:20:54.440 | Francisco and I remember that was actually because Tiara was yeah looking at like where

00:21:01.440 | where to go to school I think you might have been looking at Berkeley as well at that time

00:21:05.040 | yeah at that time she was actually looking for her undergrad school so yeah that was

00:21:12.960 | in 2019 yeah and I remember saying to you guys like oh you know where should we meet

00:21:18.800 | and I was like oh I really like bubble tea should we go to bubble tea and I swear both

00:21:22.000 | of you guys to your eyes lit up with like oh we love bubble tea yeah yeah I mean we

00:21:28.160 | love the boba tea and it's like yeah we we really enjoy that it's funny actually I only

00:21:34.400 | started like we first had our like first boba tea like in 2018 or so like off right out

00:21:39.520 | of mine was like yeah we should go try it it was like and it's like amazing yeah so

00:21:42.720 | like a lot of times we look if we are traveling around and we see a bubble tea location we'll

00:21:48.400 | we'll give it a try I gotta admit I thought it was the weirdest sounding thing ever and

00:21:53.360 | I ignored it for a very long time yeah we're at tea with like tapioca that yeah balls yeah

00:22:02.560 | no not for me but it's fine because the tapioca balls are like the best part of it it's like

00:22:07.520 | oh yeah I like getting all the tapioca balls and like of course absolutely and just the fact

00:22:12.480 | you've got these awesome straws that are tapioca yeah it's great and you know generally bubble tea

00:22:18.960 | places also have extremely evil fried food options as well which is always always good

00:22:25.280 | so to be clear um yeah I mean for people that don't know uh I uh I'm a university professor

00:22:34.080 | that works in Tunisian field um very closely actually the Tunisian field um so not just AI

00:22:41.920 | and not just deep learning but specifically having done not just work in medical AI but

00:22:46.400 | quite a bit of work in microscopy so we um we chat nowadays what four days a week you know

00:22:56.080 | about a work we're doing which is super fun um and it's like one of the delightful things about the

00:23:04.640 | world that we're now in that we get to have this amazing you know collegial relationship despite

00:23:13.920 | the fact we we live in different parts of the world we're very different ages we're very different

00:23:20.480 | life stages we don't work for the same companies at all like I don't know I guess like maybe you've

00:23:28.080 | almost grown up with that or or does that strike you as kind of like amazing and unusual as well

00:23:34.560 | well yeah I don't know I guess I mean I think yeah part of it is just the power of technology

00:23:43.840 | and part of it is just me also like I'm just like always trying to reach out to people and try to

00:23:50.720 | interact with lots of people from different backgrounds so like that's kind of the thing

00:23:55.040 | that I enjoy so um and that would have been harder a few years ago you know when

00:24:01.200 | we didn't have that the accomplancing and yeah so but yeah I mean I think yeah I think yeah

00:24:10.320 | especially since the pandemic and all this video accomplancing has happened that has definitely

00:24:14.560 | opened up more opportunities for this sort of work yeah and of course like even the opportunity

00:24:21.360 | for remote jobs and things like that like I'm working part-time with this with this AI company

00:24:27.920 | and you know I'm obviously working remote like the company's technically based in UK but like the

00:24:32.800 | entire company like most of the company and like all the almost all the researchers are like in

00:24:37.760 | various different parts of the world and and that I don't I think they kind of came about because of

00:24:43.280 | you know um I guess it was like a lot of these AI communities kind of sprouted during this uh

00:24:50.080 | you know pandemic and so a lot of these kind of uh open source decentralized communities it

00:24:57.440 | only happened because of the pandemic and I think at that time a lot of us were bored and you know

00:25:02.400 | interested in like you know what could we do and so that that kind of led to this whole you know

00:25:07.920 | oh you know decentralized community happen these sorts of communities happening and now that that's

00:25:14.240 | become kind of the norm now which is yeah I think it's a great thing well I know for some people

00:25:19.520 | but I mean I think for a lot of people listening to this it wouldn't be very normal at all I mean

00:25:23.360 | for me it's like been normal for a long time my first company Fastmail was well you know my my

00:25:30.640 | school old school friend who I started with with it was local but everybody else was spread around

00:25:35.280 | the world and we had all just met over the internet that was I don't 1999 um we I'm trying

00:25:42.800 | to remember I guess we well a lot of the lot of us we never even really spoke directly over even

00:25:49.920 | Skype or anything it was all just text chat email that worked really well I've always yeah I've

00:25:56.800 | always liked being able to choose who I work with based on who's the best person to work with rather

00:26:05.120 | than who happens to live nearby you know yeah yeah the other thing I've noticed I at least for myself

00:26:12.880 | is like I find like you know I think asynchritists chatting or whatever it feels like sometimes it's

00:26:21.680 | easier to I don't know reach out to people and to like interact with the people and like I feel like

00:26:28.240 | yeah well it's not of course that's easier that they're just available you can just send them a

00:26:32.800 | message and like yeah but it's like also like I don't know I feel like like it gives you more I

00:26:41.520 | feel like I'm more open to be able to you know interact with people like this like otherwise I

00:26:46.560 | may may feel like you know I think especially with platforms like discord and things like that because

00:26:51.840 | like right emails I think the thing is like things like emails feel very like professional you kind

00:26:57.120 | of like have to be like you know you want it to be all professional but there's something like

00:27:01.520 | these sorts of platforms like discord and I guess there you know other different platforms like that

00:27:05.760 | it's like you can just like quickly send them a message I mean it is particularly discord right

00:27:10.000 | like that's I think yeah yeah I think it's particularly discord and let's so let's just

00:27:13.120 | clarify so so the way you and I interact with our little community you know is

00:27:20.400 | we have a kind of a discord text chat where we we kind of you know because we're all over the world

00:27:29.920 | literally you know Africa Europe Australia US different time zones so we say oh here's

00:27:37.840 | something I tried here's some pictures of it here's a link to the code whatever and then we have our

00:27:44.480 | you know whatever for four days a week video chat and I do think that video chat adds a lot as well

00:27:52.640 | like I feel like it's I don't know I really yeah I really like that lower latency communication

00:28:02.480 | channel as well yeah yeah I mean just to be clear like it's not just us doing discord but like a

00:28:10.880 | lot of these open source AI communities that plays discord and it's like um yeah like nowadays you'll

00:28:18.480 | see like cutting-edge research being shared in discord channels just like kind of like like it

00:28:25.520 | feels like now you know like I think it's normal but like when you take a step back you realize

00:28:30.800 | that's kind of absurd right like I mean not just read but developed so I mean let's talk okay so

00:28:35.520 | let's talk about I mean you were very very modest about you know this AI venture you're involved in

00:28:41.200 | so to be clear the AI venture is stability AI and it's not just some hokey little thing it's

00:28:47.760 | actually I don't know I would argue it's maybe the most cutting-edge exciting AI startup in the world

00:28:56.960 | um it's and you're not just working there part-time you are leading the medical AI

00:29:04.560 | group there um it's like just getting that out of the way you're um but yeah it's kind of like that

00:29:10.640 | stability AI a lot of it happens over discord because the people are yeah they're all over

00:29:18.000 | the world and there's constantly folks saying what experiment they're going to try running or

00:29:25.360 | the results they've just got or so forth yeah I mean do you want to talk more about yeah what

00:29:30.880 | what that how that works and what that feels like yeah sure yeah like I think so

00:29:38.800 | with stability AI and the research groups under stability AI they're mostly these sorts of uh

00:29:46.400 | communities that are effectively you know for the most part just discord servers I think now

00:29:52.480 | as the company is growing you know there may be some aspects of becoming a little bit more formal

00:29:56.560 | but for the most part these are like open discord servers where you know pretty much anybody can

00:30:02.080 | drop in and um and they can help out as they want of course there are some people who are going to

00:30:07.680 | be employed by stability AI but there are other people who are just you know volunteering sharing

00:30:12.320 | their expertise so oftentimes you'll just have you know people they're often academics right

00:30:17.520 | who are kind of like yeah it's not exactly volunteering it's more like actively collaborating

00:30:24.720 | with people who aren't necessarily at the same university so like there are people who are

00:30:29.120 | completely new uh well not completely new I mean they still have some you know they're taking

00:30:33.200 | classes or whatever um but they want to get their hands dirty in actual research and they're able

00:30:37.360 | to get involved and you know work on research projects but then there are also people who are

00:30:42.160 | actual AI researchers you know academics or maybe even sometimes even people from AI startups or AI

00:30:48.640 | companies um and they're also able to get involved and um and help out you know and lend their own

00:30:55.760 | expertise um so it's like you know a mix of different groups and I think it's good that we

00:31:02.080 | have a sort of mix of different groups because you have different perspectives that you can get as

00:31:05.360 | well and you know you know a very diverse set of perspectives which I think is very important for

00:31:11.360 | any sort of research project to be able to have that set of uh you know that sort of diversity

00:31:16.720 | um and I think that being open you know having a sort of open environment um through this sort of

00:31:22.560 | discord server really uh enables and fosters that kind of collaboration and diversity so like it

00:31:29.440 | seems to be working quite well um so there are a few um I mean I can talk a little bit about some

00:31:36.640 | of the research organizations there's in with your AI but let's let's come back to that later maybe

00:31:42.720 | yeah um because um yeah I'm actually you know I feel like having got a sense of like

00:31:48.720 | what you're working on now uh at a high level I'm actually I want to come back to that but

00:31:57.280 | first I want to I'm really keen to learn more about you Tanishk okay um and I think a good way

00:32:04.400 | to find out about people is you know to do a bit of a biography you know talk about your your the

00:32:12.880 | chronology of your life which I'm sure will have lots of interesting facets but yeah first of all

00:32:20.080 | maybe you can tell me a bit about the family that you come from you know uh I I believe you were

00:32:29.280 | born in the US but yeah I mean we're you know where were you born or where did your parents come from

00:32:34.160 | and what were they doing with their lives before you came on the scene yeah sure um so um you know

00:32:43.280 | I'm Indian my parents are um both Indian born in India and um then uh first my mom's background

00:32:54.240 | so my mom's background is in veterinary medicine um my mom did her uh degree in India and then

00:33:03.440 | um and then my dad's background my dad technically did uh bachelors in um in

00:33:14.560 | electrical engineering uh but then uh right after my dad uh left university he got hired to do more

00:33:24.320 | software engineering stuff however since then he's been working in in software he must have been very

00:33:29.280 | quite an early software engineer yeah um do you know what he's working on um yeah so this is like

00:33:38.080 | maybe late 18 sorry late 80s early 90s yeah late 80s probably um okay so not too early then early

00:33:48.320 | yeah um so I forget exactly which which part of India which part of India was was that um so yeah

00:34:00.640 | both of my parents are from Kerala which is like the southern states yeah yeah kind of the most

00:34:07.120 | south state of India um and so yeah um like my mom went to veterinary school over there and it's like

00:34:16.480 | one of the leading veterinary schools in the country um and actually my my grandparents my

00:34:22.960 | mom's parents are also like they're also veterinarians um uh yeah um and they're also you know really

00:34:30.560 | accomplished people um like my my grandmother is like she was like the first woman veterinary

00:34:40.400 | phd or something like that or yeah yeah she she was like I'm kind of also like a trailblazer and

00:34:46.480 | then my uh my yeah also my grandfather um was oh yeah yeah my grandmother like apparently

00:34:55.520 | she like discovered a new virus and like yeah she she's done a lot of I mean you know work

00:35:02.160 | as well in veterinary medicine and um and also my my grandfather also um like then like I think

00:35:10.640 | yeah at one point uh my grandfather and grandmother they worked in Nigeria and so my my um my mom and

00:35:23.520 | our family were living in Nigeria for a few years but they were like they were like in the government

00:35:29.360 | like one of the like kind of like the top of like veterinary medicine in the entire entire uh

00:35:35.200 | entire country and they had really um you know so they're very accomplished people in veterinary

00:35:42.160 | medicine um you know and and so my mom was also kind of you know working at veterinary medicine

00:35:48.960 | or you know studying veterinary medicine um and then so then my mom came to the US and um

00:35:57.680 | met my dad and got married and um then so my dad was working uh in software engineering for a bit

00:36:07.920 | um and he was working they were in upstate New York um which is like in Utica which is

00:36:14.320 | like like what brought them to what brought them to America oh well so my dad was actually uh

00:36:21.840 | we kind of was brought up in in America so like my dad like so my dad's family moved to America

00:36:28.080 | like when he was in like middle school or so uh so my dad so my dad was uh you know brought

00:36:33.920 | up actually in in America so my dad used to live in it sorry what um yeah what what prompted that

00:36:41.040 | move um i don't know exactly i think my so my grandma my my dad's mother or my grandmother

00:36:47.680 | she was working as a nurse in America um and yeah i guess yeah i guess for better opportunities uh

00:36:55.600 | yeah so they they moved to America um but then my mom only moved um after she completed her

00:37:04.400 | veterinary degree and um and then when she um came to America um she met my mom my dad and got married

00:37:14.560 | so um yeah and then so they were they were living in Utica which is like upstate New York really

00:37:22.000 | freezing cold weather uh then you know i think my dad's company i kind of i think at least i think

00:37:29.600 | that that facility shut down something like that so uh they were going they had to find a new place

00:37:36.720 | um and they were they were tired of the freezing cold weather so they were my dad managed to find

00:37:43.200 | a job here it remember yeah he found a job in in in Davis in California um and so that's near

00:37:52.240 | San Diego right oh that's near Sacramento so oh right i remember now yeah yeah so it's about

00:37:59.120 | inland from inland from San Francisco yeah it's about like in our northeast uh no yeah

00:38:05.680 | an hour northeast of San Francisco um and so yeah my my my dad found a job there in in Davis

00:38:14.880 | and and they found a house in exactly but well yeah they were personally living in an apartment

00:38:19.120 | and then they found a house in Sacramento so you know since then they've been in Sacramento

00:38:27.040 | so that's been about like 25 years or so something like that um so and my yeah well my dad has been

00:38:34.400 | working at yeah basically my dad's been working at this company for i guess i think this year

00:38:40.960 | was 26 years so yeah like 26 26 or 27 it's 26 years yeah 36 years um

00:38:48.640 | so what's your company for 26 years it's just like nowadays that is unheard of obviously

00:38:55.360 | especially in California and what is what is your earliest memory Tanishk my earliest memory

00:39:06.080 | um i mean i had like some really vague memories maybe like i don't know maybe like three or

00:39:12.800 | four years old like really vague memories but i think a lot of my earliest memories were well

00:39:17.680 | yeah i do remember like a little bit in preschool so i must have been four um so i do remember a

00:39:23.440 | little bit in preschool yeah tell me what do you remember about preschool oh well many of you know

00:39:30.560 | just like i guess playing playing around um like um i guess um i guess when my parents would pick

00:39:41.760 | me up from preschool um and just like i guess certain yes it's like very vague but still like

00:39:47.520 | i kind of remember it um yeah i think a lot of my memories are more more probably from

00:39:56.080 | the kindergarten onwards i think that's kind of where yeah yeah now okay so this is interesting

00:40:02.160 | so you went to preschool you went to kindergarten but i know in the end you um you did homeschooling

00:40:08.960 | right so when did that switch happen and and why yeah um so it needs like worth talking about like

00:40:19.920 | when maybe my parents realized i was i guess different or special or whatever um and how that

00:40:27.760 | kind of resulted like and how that affected my education um but like so like my parents realized

00:40:34.000 | i was different like from very early on i guess maybe you know when i was a few months old um

00:40:41.440 | because like for example my my mom would like test my comprehension so like for example reading

00:40:46.960 | picture books or like yeah showing picture books to me and everything's like that and my mom would

00:40:51.200 | like ask questions and stuff and i was able to like you know point at things and he kind of responds

00:40:56.240 | so like my mom was like yeah i'm not sure if this is normal for like someone who's only a few months

00:41:00.880 | old um and i guess it was i guess yeah it is kind of a little bit yeah it's interesting she figured

00:41:06.480 | out it's not you know because like um to me as a parent my daughter who's seven sounds like she's

00:41:16.160 | at a very similar level to where you were when you were seven which is like you were doing some

00:41:20.480 | college courses and my daughter Claire's also doing some college courses and so like i would

00:41:26.080 | say she's you know her academic progress recently has been unusual but i didn't neither me or my

00:41:34.320 | wife saw that at all early on and i have no idea that's if that's because she wasn't doing

00:41:41.120 | anything exceptional or just we had no idea what was normal um so it's interesting that your parents

00:41:46.880 | are able to recognize that it was it was unusual because as a parent you don't actually ask

00:41:52.240 | anything to compare to at least that's my experience yeah that's true like i think i think my dad was

00:41:59.920 | a little bit more like hesitant was like i don't know like you know all parents think their children

00:42:04.880 | are special right it's like so i think my dad was a little bit hesitant at first uh but my mom was

00:42:10.720 | like more convinced like yeah maybe there's something different and like so yeah and then

00:42:16.320 | eventually like so first of all like my mom was like doing her phd and and yeah my mom did like

00:42:24.960 | uh yeah my mom was doing my mom did like a master's degree at UC at UC Davis so um i guess when my dad

00:42:31.040 | my mom moved to to Sacramento and Davis uh you know my mom was able to do some uh studies there

00:42:38.320 | but like my mom was in her the middle of her phd um in veterinary studies yeah well it was technically

00:42:45.280 | like comparative pathology or something like that but yeah it was um yeah um but yes my mom was

00:42:54.160 | doing for phd when she was pregnant with me so originally the plan was just to take a few months

00:42:59.040 | off or like a year off or something like that and go back uh to completing the phd but then i think

00:43:05.360 | when my mom realized uh well maybe there's something special about about me or something different about

00:43:10.480 | me um that my mom decided to actually quit quit the phd and and become a a stay-at-home mom just to

00:43:19.280 | just to be able to support me and you know make sure i get the support that i need so i mean that's

00:43:24.720 | not like a really bold thing to do like i mean obviously selfless but like parents are expected

00:43:33.120 | to be selfless you know like that's you know um but yeah bold in the sense that like speaking as

00:43:39.840 | a parent from you know as soon as our daughter could go to a normal school which was rather

00:43:47.520 | delayed because of covid that covid would have been in the first year and all the schools were

00:43:51.040 | closed in san francisco we sent her to a normal school because that's what you do you know and

00:43:59.760 | it wasn't until we had like i don't know maybe it sounds really slow but it was like basically a

00:44:05.120 | year of realizing things like it didn't go terribly she was happy but it didn't go great and she never

00:44:14.400 | she definitely never learned anything and her only comments about the classes were that they were

00:44:18.480 | boring yeah yeah it was it was really a year of like not great progress that we finally thought

00:44:27.680 | okay maybe this is not the best environment for her so i mean yeah your mom yeah she really

00:44:34.800 | took a bold step very very early it's amazing yeah yeah it is kind of amazing because of course yeah

00:44:43.280 | like i think also you know my mom did definitely did have great career opportunities waiting

00:44:51.200 | waiting for her if you know if that was something my mom wanted to pursue but instead my mom decided

00:44:56.800 | instead to to focus on on me at the time and of course my sister later on so yeah it is definitely

00:45:03.280 | a huge sacrifice on on her yeah but also a huge amount of self-confidence right because yeah it's

00:45:09.920 | hard as a parent i find it hard as a parent to do things that are like totally different to what

00:45:15.520 | everybody else in the community is doing because there's always for me the second guessing of like

00:45:20.320 | oh i don't like i don't want to do weird things and make my child weird and like not give them

00:45:26.240 | the best opportunities and so there's always this very natural draw towards like just doing what

00:45:31.920 | everybody else is doing the basis system can't be that bad so yeah i mean she had a lot of

00:45:37.040 | self-confidence to do something that is yeah it's unusual yeah yeah yeah that's that that is that's

00:45:49.280 | true yeah um and of course yeah i mean of course it's not just my mom of course my my dad also was

00:45:55.840 | after some point no my dad was also quite convinced too so yeah you know together as a as a family um

00:46:02.880 | and so initially did your mom have to convince your dad is that i'm you're understanding that

00:46:08.160 | i'm not entirely sure but like i i mean i've heard from my you know i've heard from them like yeah

00:46:14.000 | originally you know my dad was like maybe you know all parents all parents think they're

00:46:19.520 | their children are special maybe not necessarily but i think you know after maybe after a bit

00:46:24.240 | maybe my my dad i think you know of course they they did their own research in terms of like

00:46:29.200 | child development and things like that at that young age and i think from that point onwards and

00:46:34.320 | then also eventually this was like later on i mean wait that's i mean that's interesting that's

00:46:38.560 | already interesting because i mean it may sound like an obvious thing to do is to research

00:46:42.480 | child development and i certainly did a lot of research into child development but very few

00:46:47.680 | parents i've spoken to actually spent time researching child development you're like

00:46:52.800 | uh that's that's interesting i got what do you yeah what do you know about that what did what

00:46:57.440 | did they uh-huh what did they do a lot about that to be honest um um i think i think yeah i think

00:47:06.480 | they they did like thankfully of course we should all you know with the internet you know there were

00:47:11.840 | already some resources available and then i think they may have talked to one or two people i'm not

00:47:17.440 | entirely sure honestly but then event i think eventually then they decided finally to do an iq

00:47:23.440 | test with me this was like when i was three or four years old so this was like a little bit later

00:47:28.480 | on but they yeah i think they just kind of wanted to like yeah but like my mom was like just doing

00:47:36.240 | this just to yeah our daughter didn't get one until she was six and it was only because her school

00:47:41.680 | told us they should do it and we're like uh why bother doing that you know but it actually looks

00:47:47.840 | really helpful yeah it's not like my mom needed that like to to be certain like i think it's more

00:47:53.920 | like also like certain so like for example we have like wanted to i think my mom wanted to

00:47:59.760 | get me into mensa at the time because my mom thought okay they might provide some you know

00:48:04.160 | useful resources and help with things honestly and so don't put right i mean you know so my mom had

00:48:12.240 | some high hopes about that so for that like that was maybe one of the reasons i think that my mom

00:48:16.560 | got like it just because they require those sorts of things uh but so like never just like yeah but

00:48:22.400 | so i mean of course that like definitely you know showed that i was uh you know confidently show

00:48:27.520 | you know yeah i mean let's talk about that for a moment but like so yeah sorry let's talk about

00:48:32.640 | that for a moment because it's like it's it's really something that really resonates for me

00:48:37.520 | as i say as a parent like so yeah for for our daughter her assessment showed she's in

00:48:46.560 | i don't know the top point oh oh i don't know how many ohs one percent yeah um and

00:48:53.840 | i kind of what felt like or wanted to feel like that doesn't matter i mean she was very

00:49:02.720 | um well adapted at school she had a lot of friends people liked her you know

00:49:07.840 | one level everything seemed fine but at another level she was spending hours every day

00:49:15.840 | sitting in a classroom where she was learning nothing at all and she was just basically

00:49:19.600 | practicing learning how to zone out and always be right which i think is terrible

00:49:26.080 | psychologically to always be right you know because you need to fear being wrong um and

00:49:31.520 | you know the school had a gifted program that like is for the top 10 of students and it's

00:49:38.640 | like well what about the top 10 percent of the top 10 percent you know over there you're like

00:49:42.400 | they are different you know you like those those children have

00:49:49.200 | different needs not necessarily socially but bring you know to be challenged and to be

00:49:57.920 | you know what counts as compelling content so yeah i definitely feel like it's

00:50:04.080 | mattered for us in a way that i didn't at all expect almost comfortable with yeah i mean yeah

00:50:16.160 | like yeah i don't know like i mean yeah i don't i don't care about my i2 i don't think my parents

00:50:23.280 | like were that concerned about it or like you know they couldn't yeah it was just more i guess

00:50:29.520 | yeah for these sorts of things um and um yeah in terms of like i mean that's not something to be

00:50:37.360 | proud of but it's something that's definitely impacted yeah yeah exactly you know how you have

00:50:42.800 | lived your life and how your parents instructed your life so like clearly it it matters in some

00:50:48.720 | way right yeah i guess it matters but like yeah yeah yeah he's yeah that's right um but in terms

00:50:56.160 | of like yeah what my parents were like i guess yeah going back to like when i started going to

00:51:01.600 | like preschool and kindergarten like they wanted to of course challenge me um of course like

00:51:10.800 | socially you know i was they wanted to of course give that social development to me as well like

00:51:15.360 | you don't make sure have that social development so you know they try their best you know to to set

00:51:21.120 | up something special with the school so i think you know as much like at kindergarten um and then i

00:51:28.800 | think also so like in kindergarten i think also second grade so i actually skipped first grade i

00:51:33.520 | went to second grade so i think in those two grades like i was doing like this sort of like

00:51:37.360 | i would only go maybe two or three times a week um and that was mainly just for the social aspect

00:51:42.960 | right because i'm not like learning anything new yeah because uh it's amazing how similar that is

00:51:47.920 | to Claire she skipped prep once she took her to school and jumped into first grade although she

00:51:52.560 | was doing but then for math they put her in fifth grade isn't yeah you yeah yeah i definitely felt

00:51:59.360 | as parent like oh i don't want her to miss out on social development yeah so then yeah that's what

00:52:05.440 | they yeah that's what my parents started to do to still give me that social development so you know

00:52:10.800 | i still have five to have friends at school and um but then they you know of course at home i was

00:52:17.280 | studying my own at my own level um and then i would i would participate in some of those gifted

00:52:22.160 | programs like there was like a reading program where i would be again reading it like you know

00:52:26.080 | fifth grade level that i'm reading at when i'm in kindergarten uh similar with um you know math and

00:52:31.840 | and then also i think like when i was in second grade my parents were able to stop at the school

00:52:36.400 | something where like i would be i would go to like the eighth grade class for science or something

00:52:41.920 | like that um was like participating in a few of their activities and stuff um so i'll tell you

00:52:47.920 | the challenge we faced with that which i'm guessing you might have seen something similar your parents

00:52:52.800 | might have seen something similar which is um you can put you know you can accelerate a kid

00:52:58.960 | to a higher class you know but it's not that that kid is like statically more advanced by x amount

00:53:08.480 | it's a you know pick things up quicker and so like at least with Claire she was put into grade five

00:53:15.600 | you know when she was meant to be in for bath when she meant to be in grade prep and for a month

00:53:20.000 | that was cool and she was interested and after a month she was bored again and like we didn't we

00:53:25.280 | didn't find any yeah these programs tend to be like kind of a static amount of enrichment on top of

00:53:31.680 | what they'd otherwise be doing but it doesn't seem to account for this continuous acceleration

00:53:37.840 | where they're doing like a year's worth of learning every month or two like that doesn't

00:53:42.480 | seem to fit very well with any of these programs yeah well the thing was like my parents tried to

00:53:48.240 | like do something very special and like very cheap like something catered specifically to me and they

00:53:55.520 | try to work that out with the school for a long time yeah it had a lot of meetings with you know

00:54:00.560 | people at the school but then eventually then the school was very at a certain point they they kind

00:54:07.760 | of weren't as flexible and they just kind of did not want to you know support whatever my parents

00:54:16.000 | thought would be best for me yeah but it sounds like that made quite an effort um they they kind

00:54:23.040 | of say the same thing about our child school like they're quite after yeah and they need some effort

00:54:28.160 | but again that was after a lot of my parents pushing them right like this was like my parents

00:54:35.600 | put a lot of work you know you know they had several meetings i mean i still kind of lately

00:54:40.400 | remember like some of the meetings but they were like really like trying to you know argue it out

00:54:46.480 | with some of the yeah the the the folks at the school yeah i mean that's such a common story

00:54:51.760 | i've heard so many parents say yeah they like the advocacy is exhausting and demanding yeah it is

00:54:59.920 | exhausting yeah i i remember that being the case for my parents and the only reason my my parents

00:55:07.760 | kept me in the school was because of the social aspect of things but then as i so like the thing

00:55:15.760 | was like with the second grade that the teacher was very supportive so that really helped then as

00:55:21.760 | advantage of third grade the teacher was not at all supportive yeah um and then some teachers almost

00:55:28.000 | seem to be antagonistic or threatened or something like some teachers really seem to react negatively

00:55:33.360 | yes yes i think they do feel kind of threatened that like they're maybe they're not like they're

00:55:38.000 | not the ones who are teaching or like you know or like you know maybe they feel like yeah threading

00:55:44.000 | like oh this this is like a know-it-all kind of kid or something like that i don't know yeah i

00:55:49.040 | mean we had something like that with claire there was you know that her school on the whole was

00:55:54.160 | trying really hard and they there was actually a gifted program in high school that they put her

00:56:00.000 | into when math was too boring and yeah it's like oh this is cool you know like two two years of high

00:56:09.520 | school math in one year and maybe challenging and then there was a change of headmaster at the high

00:56:16.480 | school and it was weird the way he took this like personal interest in like getting rid of our

00:56:26.720 | daughter out of school it's like yeah he sent us this email and like and like send an email to the

00:56:34.080 | primary school and yeah he just seemed really offended by the fact that there was a young child

00:56:40.800 | studying math in his school in a way that i just i didn't understand how he was thinking about it

00:56:46.400 | yeah yeah some people are like that and i think that's what happened in third grade and yeah like

00:56:53.440 | like the second grade teacher was very supportive and i think some of the folks at the school were

00:56:57.200 | supportive but then i was going into third grade i think they're also some of the the staff also

00:57:02.240 | changed and those folks were yeah less supportive they felt threatened and then also i don't know

00:57:08.960 | how you know what it is but like the you know the students also were very antagonistic towards me

00:57:16.320 | at that point and i was getting wow already at that age yeah yeah i was getting bullied i i mean i

00:57:22.480 | kind of remember like there were times where like for example some of the students would like steal

00:57:28.080 | my supplies um then some of them would like try to like like they would quiz me like mental math

00:57:35.200 | and like if i didn't answer they're like oh you're not smart or things like that and like i'm a kind

00:57:38.960 | of person who's like actually pretty bad at mental math to be honest i think that's like one of the

00:57:46.000 | things i'm not very good at so like you know you know that's that was you know not a very good yeah

00:57:51.840 | it was very i guess yeah the entire environment kind of became toxic um and i was not enjoying

00:57:58.080 | going to school like before i used to like enjoy going to school you know i had some friends you

00:58:03.040 | know i thought it was you know it was just for me to have fun i mean third graders must be learning

00:58:07.920 | this attitude from somewhere right like yeah exactly yeah that's where that i think i think

00:58:13.840 | part of it does come from both you know the parents maybe you know there's some aspect

00:58:17.520 | from the parents again from the staff the teacher i don't know uh but i think there there's of course

00:58:23.200 | some aspect where it's like yeah they are learning it you know from from yeah other figures yeah so

00:58:31.040 | at that point like i was not enjoying going to school yeah no okay i can i can get why your mom

00:58:35.600 | did homeschooling at that point because yeah sounds like this is not working out

00:58:40.880 | at all exactly i mean they tried their best to get it to work but if it just didn't work so they

00:58:45.120 | were like yeah we're we're gonna take him out of school and and homeschool him so let me just just

00:58:51.040 | let me just take a diversion for a moment then just because i've been as i said studying a lot of

00:58:56.720 | the research around education and child development and um as i expect you know the the reality is

00:59:04.400 | that on pretty much only any socialization or social measure homeschooling kids on average

00:59:12.880 | come out ahead of kids that go to normal schools um so you know that's that that that's the other

00:59:21.520 | thing when when we were like oh maybe we should homeschool Claire it's like oh no what if she

00:59:25.520 | turns out to be some kind of weird freakoid who doesn't know how to deal with people that's not

00:59:31.840 | what the research shows at all yeah um and indeed you don't seem to have come out as a

00:59:36.960 | weird freakoid freakoid you can't deal with people or if at least if you are you seem to be able to

00:59:41.280 | hide it very well yeah i mean that man definitely been like the complaint everyone says it's like

00:59:48.560 | you look at like like that's like what like especially when i was younger that was like one

00:59:52.960 | of the you know questions like everyone had one about his social skills and like like you see like

00:59:57.840 | any interviews you look at like the comments on any of these interviews like i mean obviously i don't

01:00:03.840 | i'm not affected by any of these comments or anything but it's just kind of funny to just

01:00:07.040 | see like everyone's like what about his social skills i'm like you don't need to worry about that

01:00:12.640 | but yeah um i think like so when i was yeah when i was younger of course they uh my parents had

01:00:20.960 | given me different opportunities for social skills so like i used to i used to go to uh the

01:00:28.240 | san francisco boys chorus i was in in the chorus for quite some time um so i had you know you know

01:00:35.440 | that was that was happening while i was homeschooled um and so that i got you know that was one

01:00:40.640 | opportunity for me to socialize but then i think it's also like i guess i didn't have any issue

01:00:48.800 | like like as i started a college and stuff like that i didn't have much issue socializing with

01:00:54.800 | people who are like twice my age or three times my age right right and like why you know a couple of

01:01:01.280 | questions like why would we assume that the best people to socialize with the people whether you're

01:01:06.880 | saying chronological age yeah that doesn't happen in adulthood we're all kinds of different ages

01:01:13.120 | and and b why would socializing well with seven-year-olds be an important skill within year 18

01:01:21.200 | like yeah there's a lot of assumptions in there that don't make sense to me and so like yeah

01:01:25.920 | homeschooling kids generally seem to have a much wider age group or diversity of people they hang

01:01:33.840 | out with rather than people yeah exactly their exact chronological age and go to a school with

01:01:38.720 | the same religious profile or whatever as you know everybody else yeah yeah that's definitely

01:01:46.800 | an important point like when i went to so i started out in a community college which is like

01:01:53.440 | at in in u.s that's like the sort of like two-year college uh but it's usually like a lot of times

01:02:00.960 | it's not only like students in so sometimes students in high school will be taking college

01:02:06.000 | classes there sometimes after high school they'll spend a three two years in this college and then

01:02:11.360 | go to complete their remaining two years at a regular university then also there's a lot of

01:02:16.480 | students who are coming back for like continuing education and things like that so a community

01:02:21.040 | college has a very diverse group of people you know you have students who are like high schoolers

01:02:26.960 | uh you know so they're and how long earlier when you were starting to go to this community college

01:02:31.600 | i was seven years old seven okay yeah so then they were you know standing through like in the early

01:02:36.720 | teens all the way up to people who may be in their 60s 70s uh so you have this very diverse

01:02:44.560 | group of people very diverse ages um and so can i just ask something about this just sorry to

01:02:52.160 | interrupt i just wanted to make my guess would be tell me if i'm wrong all right that you wouldn't

01:02:59.120 | have had the same problems with bullying as a seven-year-old at a community college because

01:03:04.640 | the other kids would have probably seen you more as like a adorable little kid rather than a

01:03:10.880 | threat or something and i would imagine they were on the whole pretty pretty nice to you was that

01:03:18.160 | yeah um for the most part the students were pretty nice to me um i think

01:03:27.920 | i think um also like it was more like i think yeah a lot of students just thought um

01:03:32.320 | i think you know you know i'm the kind of student who's very engaged in the class and you know

01:03:40.160 | studying very well and so they also thought of me kind of just as a probably good student in the

01:03:44.720 | class and you know interacted with me accordingly um occasionally you'll have students who did feel

01:03:51.600 | maybe a little bit threatened that happens occasionally um but you know i try to avoid

01:03:57.840 | that as much as possible but for the most part yeah something less i got um over bullying like

01:04:04.320 | i had in in third grade or whatever yeah i i got a bit of an insight into your experience as a

01:04:10.640 | seven-year-old because we're lucky enough that you have a recording of you as a nine-year-old

01:04:15.600 | describing that experience um and a ted x talk and i think one of the things that really struck

01:04:24.240 | me or there's a couple of things that really struck me but one was how much again advocacy

01:04:31.600 | was required by your parents to get somebody to agree to teach you yeah yeah um yeah can

01:04:41.040 | you talk a bit about i mean obviously it wasn't you doing that but like what's your memory of

01:04:45.440 | that or what have you yeah about that from your parents and what what what what was it like to

01:04:49.520 | get because okay just to be clear my understanding is as a seven-year-old you were a very good college

01:04:56.320 | student like you got a's and top marks and so yeah maybe talk a bit about like yeah what kind

01:05:02.320 | of results were you getting but then what was the experience like of actually getting to attend these

01:05:07.280 | classes right yeah so again at that point it was again my parents are trying to challenge me and

01:05:14.960 | you know keep me uh you know yeah you know try to academically challenge me um so they thought you

01:05:24.160 | know at the time i was interested like in of course i was already kind of interested in science you

01:05:29.680 | know i was interested in like paleontology astronomy so they were looking for and like

01:05:36.640 | you know i was dinosaurs in space are always good kids things yeah absolutely there's still

01:05:41.600 | like an aspect of me being a regular seven-year-old who loves like dinosaurs in space well of course

01:05:45.840 | that's the thing right our daughter's the same she's such a regular seven-year-old she likes

01:05:50.000 | fairies and unicorns and spaceships and imaginary animal friends yeah yeah yeah i mean i think yeah

01:06:00.560 | the difference is like i took it a lot farther than like a regular you know seven-year-old like

01:06:05.120 | i was like really stunning everything about dinosaurs and everything about the maze our

01:06:10.320 | daughter has watched the entire professor dave astronomy video series like i don't know five

01:06:15.440 | times and she's always quizzing me about main sequence stars and brown clouds and i'm just like

01:06:21.920 | slightly picking things up but yeah yeah exactly yeah yeah i remember some of that from my

01:06:29.680 | astronomy days yeah um so yeah i think i think so at the point was like the point was like

01:06:37.600 | i had gone through a lot of the material that is available for kids my age even like you know kids

01:06:42.400 | ordered me in terms of like reading books about dinosaurs and things like that you know even

01:06:49.360 | starting to maybe get into a couple of papers and things like that so they figured you know that a

01:06:55.040 | better way to potentially challenge me was you know going to college and i mean i had also asked

01:06:59.920 | them about this too this is something that i had myself asked about um you know this is something

01:07:04.640 | that i was you know interested in as well um and so you know in fact at first they didn't take me

01:07:10.000 | very seriously oh this kid wants to go to college that doesn't make any sense but are they being

01:07:14.480 | your parents or they being yeah yeah my parents like even they were like at first uh i don't know

01:07:19.280 | like sure you're advanced but you know you're still seven i guess at the time i'd asked i

01:07:23.360 | was maybe like five or six and they were like yeah that's real a bit weird i guess yeah it is

01:07:27.840 | kind of weird so um but then i think they they noticed like you know i'm still like kind of

01:07:33.200 | study this as much as possible and i you know college would be a good opportunity for me to

01:07:38.400 | you know pursue this further and you know i was asking them relentlessly about this um and so

01:07:46.000 | eventually the again contacting some professors as you can imagine most of the professors said no

01:07:54.400 | they managed to find one professor who uh said said yes um and she agreed to have my mom as a

01:08:03.840 | student in the class and then i just would be part of the you know just you know going along with my

01:08:09.760 | with my mom so i wasn't actually at that point an official student i was just with my mom was a

01:08:15.280 | student and then uh he would so i was just sitting in the class then when it came to like things like

01:08:22.000 | quizzes and exams just for fun he would give me those quizzes and exams and i would take them

01:08:27.680 | and you know i was getting eight grades in all the quizzes and exams now so he was very amazed by

01:08:34.400 | that i don't know these topics are largely like kind of more like rote learning really aren't they

01:08:40.560 | often yeah so this was a geology class so you know there was an aspect of it that is rote learning

01:08:46.000 | but also like i think there's still some aspect of it that's understanding you know the geological

01:08:51.040 | processes and how how how they work and how they interact but for yeah there's a lot i guess my

01:08:56.080 | point being like i find that for a lot of the stuff Claire's doing i actually feel like a lot of seven

01:09:01.120 | year olds could do it because you know it's it's you know like i mentioned to you the other day

01:09:06.880 | she's doing biochemistry at the moment and yeah it's largely college level material some of it's

01:09:12.320 | actually beyond college level material like chirality and stuff i think normally you tend to do

01:09:16.720 | post-grad is my understanding um and yeah she had to like learn the amino acids which yeah

01:09:23.440 | i think you know she learned some fast i didn't know this stuff either and she learned them faster

01:09:28.080 | than me but it's not surprising because you know the young brain does learn things faster than

01:09:33.200 | an adult so like i do think that this might also be partly a general thing as kids can perhaps learn

01:09:40.800 | more than we expect yeah that's probably true i think i don't yeah i don't know like you know what

01:09:49.200 | kind of skills are required at these different ages or like or you know develop at different ages

01:09:54.720 | there may be some skills but yeah i mean of course a lot of the memorization is possible

01:09:59.360 | at a young age probably yeah maybe i can come back to this topic i'm really interested in talking

01:10:04.240 | about it more because um i don't know i just think it's really fascinating but yeah i don't

01:10:08.800 | i also don't want to interrupt your your story so yeah yeah do go into about your college experience

01:10:15.280 | yeah and so yeah i was like yeah basically i was in this geology class and um you know

01:10:20.720 | taking a lot of the exams and quizzes and he was you know very uh impressed and uh i think so you

01:10:28.640 | weren't really officially there you it was really like your mum's doing it and get old she has to

01:10:34.480 | babysit the kid basically yeah basically like um i guess i was presented but yeah yeah but it was

01:10:42.800 | actually secretly it was for you yes exactly yeah um so then i think so at that point and then she

01:10:51.040 | he was also kind of helping out and becoming an advocate for me as well in terms of like

01:10:56.720 | okay this is a kid who i think can potentially join this college and take some college classes

01:11:04.000 | what was his person's name um stephen stirling he was a he was a geology professor um and yeah

01:11:13.520 | so i think he's retired now but yeah he uh so yeah he he he really was helpful in terms of like

01:11:23.280 | talking with the the college staff and helping to convince them but even then they of course the

01:11:30.080 | college staff were still not that convinced they were like they kind of they were like you have to

01:11:36.320 | do well in these classes otherwise we will not let you continue so like i think the expectation

01:11:42.160 | was like getting an a basically in the classes is that a higher bar than other students would have

01:11:49.520 | had or probably i mean probably yeah um i think so yeah so for a while that's kind of what was

01:11:57.600 | happening and then also they limited me to only taking two classes per first semester so i was

01:12:03.200 | only taking two classes per semester um and so and then basically every single semester there was a

01:12:10.080 | whole process like i had to go and meet the dean and get permission from the dean and it was a whole

01:12:16.080 | process um and it was like a very special uh situation but eventually like so like i wanted

01:12:23.200 | to take more classes and progress faster yeah i mean two classes on the semester is not a lot not

01:12:30.320 | yeah it's not particularly um yeah it's not particularly engaging i guess um so the so the

01:12:39.040 | idea was then um i would graduate my school so then then i would be regular college student so

01:12:45.280 | this is around the age of nine or ten then i i managed so luckily in california they do have

01:12:52.560 | this option to like um take a a standardized test and test out of high school but you can

01:13:00.000 | only take it if you are in 10th grade so they they they we have to set it up i wonder why

01:13:06.800 | these limitations exist where they came from because somebody obviously proactively decided

01:13:11.760 | you should create this gate it's it's interesting and i think it's again like they think like oh

01:13:19.360 | you have to be you have to go through a certain amount to to have that development that they

01:13:25.120 | deem necessary i guess um i think that's what it is um but so yeah they had to like we need to like

01:13:33.680 | set it up in a specific way such that i was like officially technically in chance grade and then

01:13:37.760 | eventually i was able to take that test yeah we we had to yeah there was a way that we we had to

01:13:43.920 | like yeah set it up with some school or something yeah it was it was another whole process um and

01:13:50.080 | then eventually i was able to test out um and um and so that's some specific californian thing that

01:13:56.400 | yeah yeah i think the californian are you effectively basically just doing the year 12

01:14:01.120 | exams and the normal year 12 exams and it's not just i don't think it was a normal year 12 exam

01:14:07.200 | it was specific towards testing out like i think the idea is like so like they want they'd be allowed

01:14:12.000 | for like grade 10 and 11 students to test out of of high school actually so this is a test for these

01:14:19.200 | sorts of grade 11 and grade 10 and 11 students um so it's kind of more uh catered towards that

01:14:25.920 | particular i think there's a separate test for actually for regular grade 12 testing out uh

01:14:31.440 | but they but luckily like i mean that's kind of still like a benefit of california like i don't

01:14:37.680 | know if other states actually have this sort of uh before yeah i'll ask you about something which

01:14:45.120 | is um i wonder if you had to deal with this at that time you know but um a term that's very

01:14:52.880 | often used by psychologists in the field of like you know more advanced kids or whatever

01:14:59.040 | is um asynchronous development and so asynchronous development refers to the idea that

01:15:06.160 | some kids you know develop surprisingly quickly in certain areas but not in others you know so for

01:15:15.360 | example for kids that who would often be described as gifted which is not a term i love but i guess

01:15:22.080 | it's a term that's reasonably when i'm stored the asynchronous development often is like okay

01:15:27.120 | their handwriting's crappy because they're not particularly physically capable their understanding

01:15:32.960 | of you know complex social political etc situations as you might come across in like a

01:15:43.440 | shakespeare play don't really exist you know but they have maybe very good understanding of

01:15:52.000 | spatial reasoning or or abstract manipulation or whatever um so yeah so in in our life that's

01:16:02.880 | that asynchronous development is the big challenge because like i don't feel like i would want player

01:16:11.280 | doing a you know year 12 level english exam where she was expecting to read

01:16:19.120 | you know books like othello or something um because they're just not age appropriate they

01:16:25.840 | you know like reading comprehension okay should get it should be fine but like she's she's a

01:16:30.720 | little kid no yeah um and she certainly couldn't do the handwriting necessary for a normal like

01:16:41.360 | three-hour exam or something so yeah did you have to deal with those kinds of things or or

01:16:46.720 | with the california and stuff mainly more like modable choice analogy tests and stuff

01:16:52.160 | so the california test was yeah more more like that i think there's maybe an essay or something

01:16:56.800 | like that but for the most part it was um mostly they're just testing your knowledge and things

01:17:01.760 | like that um but overall of course my parents are what were careful about what was age appropriate

01:17:09.120 | in terms of like classes and things like that um like even like for example english classes

01:17:17.040 | you know they would review the books you know making sure they're age appropriate

01:17:23.360 | you know certain you know there were certain classes like um yeah they're different classes

01:17:30.000 | that you know my parents you know they would talk to the professors and also just clarify

01:17:36.000 | what the professor is if there's anything to be you know to be careful about and you know

01:17:40.720 | like maybe there are times when like the professors would show something and you know i would step

01:17:45.760 | out of the class for a bit while they're showing something that maybe wasn't wasn't the most age

01:17:50.720 | appropriate so like they you know there was definitely that aspect uh in terms of like

01:17:55.280 | what was age appropriate for me at the time um but apart from that like again of course

01:18:05.120 | like handwriting you know was also something i like struggle with um but i think that was more

01:18:09.760 | like i do have like some sort of like issue with with my hand in terms of like i don't know yeah

01:18:14.960 | i have some you know issue like especially for writing very long periods of time um i i much

01:18:22.480 | prefer typing and things like that i mean yeah i've absolutely yeah it's always the same and we

01:18:28.960 | actually got out we got our daughter typing we got our daughter typing like when she was five i guess

01:18:34.480 | and it's been such a great skill for her to have because there's so many things she can now do

01:18:40.800 | despite her asynchronous development because yeah little little kids can type that was not

01:18:48.720 | necessarily an asynchronous thing it was just more like i think i do have like i tend to have

01:18:53.040 | like pain or something like this i don't know some it's more like i think um yeah i don't think that

01:18:58.240 | was like a development thing that's just kind of something with my body or whatever uh so how did

01:19:04.000 | you throw that essay um well i don't know like i don't know if i had i thought there's something

01:19:12.080 | that didn't get like accommodations and things like that in terms of like specifically uh for

01:19:16.400 | this sort of issue i don't know if i had or not my child is sure but australia there's like a

01:19:21.920 | specific list of things that count as accommodations you know and they're but and like they're

01:19:27.200 | disabilities you know and you have to be able to show that it's like a due to an illness so although

01:19:32.400 | like having tiny seven-year-old hands is a disability but at least in australia

01:19:38.480 | it doesn't count as one because it's not due to an illness okay oh interesting okay well it was

01:19:44.960 | yeah and over here they counted as a disability actually when i when i have it that makes much

01:19:48.880 | more sense yeah um but like overall like apart from like age-appropriate stuff like you know

01:19:55.760 | being careful about that for the most part like and yeah i guess what they have thing is really

01:20:01.120 | not asynchronous development but apart from that for the most part like in terms of development

01:20:05.840 | like for example i was oh like my attempt was like 11 i think or so like there was one

01:20:12.160 | i took an english class and we went over like i think it was the tempest or something like

01:20:18.400 | that so i was like already like reading like shakespeare plays or whatever um and i didn't

01:20:24.640 | have that much issue with those sorts of things yeah i mean the tempest is not a particularly

01:20:30.880 | i don't know like yeah it feels like a pretty still very dense accessible story

01:20:35.760 | but yeah like rell and juliet or something or if hello or something might be hmm tougher i think

01:20:44.480 | but yeah i don't remember anything yeah go ahead what about um what about math so um

01:20:55.840 | yeah like math is needed for a lot of college level you know um stem stuff yeah well not just

01:21:09.760 | stem but also social sciences as well um so yeah what were you doing about that we used you know

01:21:18.480 | studying more advanced math and like calculus and trig and stuff and what you know was that

01:21:25.520 | like mainly your mom teaching you or how did math work um so like when i was younger um like

01:21:32.720 | again six or seven years old it was mostly my dad my dad is the more i mean my dad is a software

01:21:39.280 | engineer and of course he's he's more you know engineering background he's he was able to teach

01:21:44.480 | the the math aspect of things um so i'm yeah my dad would help me out then teach me and they were

01:21:52.720 | like different programs that you know i was i was going through in terms of um you know learning

01:21:58.160 | you know i think yes at the age of five i was doing again like fifth grade sixth grade math

01:22:03.920 | but then i would continually progress i think by nine or ten i think by nine i started like

01:22:11.840 | starting dibbling you know dabbling and and calculus and that kind of level stuff but then

01:22:17.120 | like i started taking classes like it's like even online classes and stuff and like pre-calculus and

01:22:22.080 | i think maybe even some con academy videos things like that so i was like so then by by 10 which is

01:22:28.000 | when i also graduated high school i went into um yeah i started taking i took a proper calculus

01:22:36.640 | class i mean i already studied like calculus on my own stuff like that but then i actually took

01:22:40.720 | a proper college so what do you say on your own that would be largely con academy um yeah like i

01:22:46.720 | think there was a maybe a book that i was reading and then there was like um there's like a corsera

01:22:52.720 | course i think yeah there was like this really nice corsera course that i took on single variable

01:22:57.520 | and multi-variable calculus things like that um so i think it was mostly single variable calculus

01:23:04.320 | so yeah i was mostly mostly taking just like yeah resources online things like that uh and so um

01:23:12.400 | and again like a lot of it is me like when i'm studying a lot of things it's like a lot of times

01:23:18.560 | it's like me like i have a goal in mind right so like i remember like when i was saying trigonometry

01:23:23.200 | i think this may have been the time of like the transit of venus or whatever and there was like

01:23:27.040 | the whole thing you can calculate the distance of you know the earth to the sun based on like

01:23:31.920 | you know the you know the time it takes for the transit and stuff like that and it's like

01:23:35.840 | there's a lot of trigonometry involved and so i was like studying trigonometry to understand

01:23:39.280 | that kind of stuff and then i was studying like calculus also to better understand some

01:23:43.360 | physics stuff so a lot of it is me i mean that's my like constant goal with teaching my daughter

01:23:50.000 | is trying to find those things where she can get to do it in context because honestly like she

01:23:55.440 | so i for math i teach her and one other kid her best friend and the best friend

01:24:01.840 | is totally happy to learn math for its own sake like he just has so much joy in being like oh i

01:24:09.760 | now know a new thing yeah and my daughter's not like that at all she just doesn't care

01:24:16.720 | until it's got a reason so we do a lot of um art of problem solving did that exist when you were

01:24:24.160 | i don't know i am i haven't done down it's it's amazing it's you know it's uh fantastic um it's

01:24:32.000 | basically kind of like designed as a kind of math olympiad prep but it's like 12 years worth

01:24:40.080 | of math olympiad prep if you know what i mean so it's like teaching the entire primary and high

01:24:44.720 | school curriculum right but on the assumption that the kids studying it are really interested in

01:24:50.320 | solving challenging problems and thinking carefully about them and they're going to

01:24:54.320 | continue all the way through that's done in a very thoughtful way and um it's a great program but yeah

01:25:00.480 | my daughter's really not interested her friend loves it and then the other day i was like okay

01:25:07.680 | well you know for some reason oh that's right i was having trouble setting up a factorial computer

01:25:13.440 | game server for them and they were like why isn't it working and i'm saying like well it works if i

01:25:18.320 | put in an ip address but not a dns name for some reason and then and then players just like what

01:25:25.040 | exactly is an ip address so why you know i was like okay all right stop everything this class

01:25:30.640 | is going to be about you know ip addresses and we're going to have to do binary masks and we're

01:25:37.040 | going to do octets and uh you know and now she's totally into it and like at every step she's just

01:25:45.040 | like wait how on earth do multiple things go over the same wire like oh okay well that's

01:25:49.920 | multiplexing it's like what exactly is multiplexing how does that work and like oh well okay let's

01:25:55.280 | come up with a little simple algorithm that we could use for multiplexing and yeah with context

01:26:01.280 | she's just yeah all over it and without context she just that's okay so the interesting thing is

01:26:08.800 | like now i feel like i'm like before i came to math yeah i was more like i need to have an

01:26:15.920 | application or something to motivate that now i feel like i'm kind of interested in not just

01:26:23.120 | for the sake of it sometimes so i don't know like at a certain point i think that in a certain age

01:26:28.640 | i guess that that maybe changed i don't know so i am slightly getting there i wouldn't say i think

01:26:34.400 | i'm still not quite there like i had to have math books now that i purchased for the enjoyment but

01:26:41.280 | they're generally were like you know using apl or they're like you know different perspectives on

01:26:51.440 | math or whatever i you know i'm not somebody who could just study a real analysis textbook

01:26:56.880 | and find that yeah a worthy thing to spend my time on yeah so yeah so i guess then i guess so yeah

01:27:08.080 | basically i was studying calculus and then uh but i still check out of like an official calculus

01:27:13.200 | college course and went through the calculus curriculum or the math curriculum at college

01:27:18.400 | so that included calculus one, calculus two, calculus three, then um i think what else then

01:27:27.440 | as i was finishing up at community college i took linear algebra and um yeah i took linear algebra

01:27:34.880 | and then in university i you know where i transferred over to the four-year university

01:27:40.720 | i took a differential equations class um and that was it in terms of like my yeah it just turned out

01:27:47.520 | to be very useful since we're spending so much time doing differential equations nowadays exactly

01:27:52.080 | yeah i mean funny there's so much stuff that i remember like in the world of math at school or

01:27:58.480 | university or whatever starting basically from trigonometry where you know we'd ask the teacher

01:28:03.360 | like what's this for and the teacher could never answer the question of like what's trigonometry

01:28:08.880 | for or what's differential calculus for or what and now yeah these things are everywhere like i

01:28:15.360 | you know use trigonometry all the time i'm and i'm like how do you do anything without trigonometry

01:28:20.720 | or without calculus but i think a lot of teachers just don't have that real world experience as

01:28:28.080 | engineers or scientists so that they genuinely don't know how to answer the question i think

01:28:31.840 | well it's going to be on exam yeah well yeah that's so like some of my classes did that was some of

01:28:39.040 | the classes really nice in terms of like you know providing those sorts of examples or like you know

01:28:43.920 | sometimes in the calculus textbooks they would provide you know actual examples of where these

01:28:48.080 | sorts of things would be used and i remember in my differential equations class uh the professor

01:28:53.440 | would start every lecture with like an example of you know the topic that we're talking about now

01:28:59.120 | like maybe it's a certain class of differential equations that we're talking about how was that

01:29:03.440 | how you know examples of the use of that in the actual world and so that's really really

01:29:08.240 | helpful like really in terms of motivating why these sorts of concepts that's really rare yeah

01:29:14.240 | it is rare he's actually he's a really great professor actually and so who's that sorry uh

01:29:19.600 | my differential equations professor yeah what's their name oh uh villium tabernet he's at uc

01:29:25.120 | davis yeah yeah um i just want to come back to khan academy as well not just khan academy but

01:29:33.760 | like i've asked you previously when we've chatted about online resources and you've

01:29:40.880 | mentioned you use things like time for learning and khan academy did you find that that stuff

01:29:47.680 | you did on like khan academy or whatever like was was useful in preparing you to take stuff like

01:29:57.680 | calculus one and things like that um i think it helped like i never been doing like especially

01:30:05.440 | like geometry i think i'll explain some algebra and geometry i mean i i learned the concepts so i

01:30:11.040 | don't how long so i did the job definitely definitely did his job and so i also learned

01:30:17.440 | some i think it did some chemistry like i used to do a lot of yeah i i think there was a time in

01:30:22.640 | i'm used to like i think a nice thing about like these like khan academy and these sorts of lectures

01:30:26.720 | and stuff it's like it's very easy to to like devour a lot in a lot of a lot of content right

01:30:32.080 | and it's like just like watch video after video and like and you're just learning all of it and

01:30:38.640 | and so that that really helps and then i think nowadays they also have like quizzes and stuff

01:30:44.000 | and i don't know if there were quizzes back then i mean taking some of these quizzes and stuff that

01:30:48.240 | also was helpful by the way i um your recommendation of trying out time for learning was not so

01:30:55.200 | accessible i tried it unfair and afterwards i was like how was that fair what do you think

01:31:00.720 | and she just goes i think it's stupid but she never had strong opinions like that about stuff

01:31:07.760 | so i was like oh okay because like it's like i don't know i might have i might have picked bad

01:31:15.040 | examples i picked the middle school stem stuff or whatever okay having said that we have since that

01:31:20.240 | time found some much more engaging youtube videos from crash course and the sisters that actually

01:31:29.920 | are pretty terrific and i'm learning yeah crash course is really really nice as well like i

01:31:35.760 | remember i mean i think i remember watching a lot of crash course videos i wish they had quizzes

01:31:39.760 | though like we always put everything we try to put everything into anki cards you know like

01:31:44.000 | most learning cards um which for math i kind of do it for them because no one remembers anything

01:31:50.800 | unless it's in anki card you know so yeah i wish there was like something like yeah crash course

01:31:59.760 | plus hmm anki cards for each lesson or something that would be amazing yeah um so okay so like i

01:32:12.560 | want to come back to your youtube talk your it's not youtube your tennis talk um so yeah as i said

01:32:19.280 | you know one thing that i've you know noticed very much was the struggles that you and your parents

01:32:26.240 | had in just getting somebody to agree to teach you like yeah i am an enthusiastic child who

01:32:31.840 | wants to learn yeah go to hell you're not old enough and then the second was the end of your talk

01:32:40.720 | was kind of like a plea to be accepted as

01:32:46.480 | you know a normal kid who

01:32:52.880 | isn't being forced to do things by a tiger mom and who just enjoys learning and like

01:33:02.320 | and we just actually all agree that's okay and i don't have to be demonized for that like these

01:33:08.400 | are not your words but i i almost felt like that's what you were kind of saying and yeah i wanted to

01:33:15.200 | hear about like what was driving that because i mean it sounds like even your parents might

01:33:21.280 | have been getting a bit like hassled in some way or like those assumptions that you were that they

01:33:27.680 | were driving you oh and like i remember you like showed pictures of like being outside and having

01:33:33.600 | parties and you're kind of like i don't just spend all my time indoors studying math you know yeah

01:33:40.080 | yeah so what what what happened is this some kind of like prejudice that you were like dealing with

01:33:45.280 | or you know what you do there is definitely like the sort of prejudice that or like the sort of

01:33:51.360 | assumption that yeah my my parents are pushing me or something like this uh could you give some

01:33:56.400 | examples of like yeah stuff that happened like that you remember and how that and how you felt

01:34:02.880 | at the time well i i guess not just yeah not just even my parents but like you hear often

01:34:09.760 | like a lot of comments are like you know and people are telling me straight to my face like

01:34:13.200 | you there's no need to hurry you know it's like like as if like this is something that

01:34:18.560 | i'm hurrying or anything like this is just me wanting to do what i want to do uh and it's like

01:34:24.080 | there's no need to hurry you know you can slow down those sorts of comments so there's that aspect

01:34:29.200 | of things from it's like kind of like from from teachers or friends of your family or what

01:34:34.960 | yeah i mean i think it's it's a combination of yeah like people who i you know even people who

01:34:40.880 | i meet for the first time sometimes they might say that you'll see it uh yeah sometimes teachers may

01:34:46.320 | say that sometimes and of course you know you'll see comments of course again you know i of course

01:34:54.160 | don't not like these sorts of comments i take your part or anything but it's just interesting to

01:34:59.040 | to see these sorts of like you know either the comments that i get from people in person or even

01:35:03.840 | the comments you see on the line must have been impacting you though like that you decided in this

01:35:09.200 | talk to like i think it's make this case i want to yeah i want to clear clear the air i guess

01:35:15.360 | right it's just like um certainly yeah i mean it doesn't like i'm not like saddened by it or

01:35:23.280 | anything like that it doesn't like you know affect me in that way i know like when people like read

01:35:28.400 | sometimes people read things like youtube comments or comments like that and they get really affected

01:35:32.800 | by it it doesn't it's not like that sort of effect it was just more like you know people and people

01:35:38.640 | are saying like yeah their parents must be pushing them more like you know you get like things like

01:35:43.600 | you know stereotypes about indian parents and things like that too right and it's like oh yeah

01:35:48.640 | bit of casual racism yeah yeah you know there's a bit of racism that goes in there too and it's like

01:35:54.400 | none of that is you know actually the reality in fact i think so let's talk about the reality so

01:36:02.800 | okay so you don't feel like you were in a hurry or you weren't being pushed to be in a hurry

01:36:10.400 | so like yeah what what was going on for you what were you trying to what were you trying to get

01:36:19.360 | out of your life i guess or get out of each day or how you know what were your priorities or interests

01:36:24.720 | i guess part of it is just like not being bored um like and um

01:36:38.400 | yeah were you bored sometimes sorry were you bored sometimes um i mean certainly when i was

01:36:48.880 | you know the younger like um i think definitely you know in the sort of elementary school and

01:36:53.600 | stuff like that it was definitely bored you know that was definitely a situation i remember Atlantic

01:36:58.000 | and you know sometimes they'll like give me tests and stuff and i'm sure i should pretty

01:37:01.440 | quickly i'm just sitting at the table doing nothing um so it was like um i have a feeling like

01:37:09.680 | being extremely bored for long periods of time as a very young kid with absolutely no way to avoid

01:37:17.280 | it could be very damaging i don't i don't have any data to back that up but it just feels like

01:37:23.760 | i feel like i've seen it you know there i mean there's certain well okay no that's not true there

01:37:30.880 | is some data to back it up i mean in a sense i don't know if you've seen the great research

01:37:35.920 | from Rurika Gross who's an Australian academic and unfortunately she recently passed away but

01:37:41.200 | she's one of the very few people that has done multi-decade longitudinal studies have

01:37:46.640 | we've found they gifted you know as they're called kids and kids who are left in their

01:37:54.080 | chronological age group class at school on average are in the bottom five percentile

01:38:00.480 | when it comes to social outcomes like they do very badly they tend to suffer depression

01:38:06.480 | at very high levels they tend to have very few friends kids the kids that are accelerated

01:38:14.400 | in by three or more grades on average are in i can't remember exactly i think it might be

01:38:21.200 | the top decile so maybe the top 10 of exactly the same metrics so like that that i mean i'm

01:38:28.880 | sure it's not just boredom but that certainly seems to align with the idea that leaving kids

01:38:34.480 | in an environment where they're bored just to keep them around kids of the same chronological

01:38:39.520 | age might be a bad idea yeah yeah um yeah i guess it's like this part of me that always like wants

01:38:50.320 | to do something like right like or like wants to um learn something wants to i guess we would do

01:38:58.400 | research like actually that was another thing like i think that was another thing like when i when i

01:39:03.680 | was in community college like this like it's always an aspect of really like always looking at what's

01:39:08.080 | you know what's what's the goal to reach right you know what is the um so i'm a very goal-oriented

01:39:13.440 | person so i don't know yeah like like you know that's a community college it's like okay i didn't

01:39:20.640 | what do i need to do to transfer to a four-year college but for university and especially at that

01:39:26.160 | time kind of my motivation was like the four young universities are like the best place to do

01:39:30.640 | research and i was like at that point like in community college i started getting into like

01:39:34.560 | okay like yeah i want to do some cutting-edge research now but like those opportunities aren't

01:39:38.720 | really available at community colleges so that was my next goal it's like let's go to four-year

01:39:43.040 | universities and then there'll be opportunity for me to do research and that and the four-year

01:39:47.600 | university i'm like okay now let's still i want to get to a phd so you know i can do even more

01:39:52.640 | research and uh and um so you had a strong sense of where you wanted to be you wanted to be doing

01:39:58.320 | cutting-edge research and there's there is a sequence of steps that have to be completed before

01:40:03.600 | exactly you can do that and of course i this is another thing like maybe this is something

01:40:09.360 | maybe worth touching on is like i know there you know the truth is like the sort of i guess path

01:40:17.280 | i've taken is still kind of conventional in a way right like i've still gone through like

01:40:21.680 | a four-year university and then a phd which i was gonna say i mean you're not like

01:40:28.320 | you haven't been in a hurry at all like it's been 12 years from when you started college

01:40:34.320 | when you're finishing your phd which is actually kind of slow yeah yeah um so there's definitely

01:40:43.360 | like a sort of conventional path that i've taken i think i mean that was the only thing i tell

01:40:52.400 | people like i think it also depends on the field like obviously i think there's some fields where

01:40:56.480 | maybe a conventional path is necessarily the best path so um but i think you know for the field that

01:41:02.080 | at least is sort of like um i guess i'm into this sort of biomedical engineering field

01:41:07.600 | unfortunately it's kind of hard to to do much work in that field if you don't have this sort

01:41:13.360 | of conventional uh background and so for us that is also about like you know you know just working

01:41:20.560 | with the system and trying to um you know try to i guess i one person was saying like i'm like

01:41:28.080 | hacking the system like trying to accelerate in the system so sometimes there's that aspect of things

01:41:33.200 | but yeah like i guess i think also the nice thing about a conventional system is you do have those

01:41:40.960 | goals and like again i work very well with having these goals so it's like you know you have those

01:41:45.680 | goals and it's very easy to to you know have that motivation to to meet those goals and

01:41:51.200 | so this is not that's another nice aspect of you know the conventional system but you know again

01:41:56.640 | it depends per person like i i i do realize there are some people where that sort of system just

01:42:01.600 | doesn't work um yeah what is it about biomedical engineering that makes like a more conventional

01:42:10.000 | path necessary i think there's again this sort of um so like yeah again it's this sort of thing where

01:42:19.840 | you know if you want the best career opportunities i think you have to have at least a bachelor's

01:42:25.360 | degree and a lot of the times you do need a phd and those are the sorts of backgrounds that of course

01:42:31.760 | um you a lot of companies will require or if you want to get into academia of course that's the

01:42:38.880 | standard path but then also uh but it's hard i guess depends on what your what kind of research

01:42:44.560 | you're interested in but oftentimes the research is done in academic labs or in in various companies

01:42:51.600 | so uh you know you have to be involved in that system to be able to get the hands-on experience

01:42:58.320 | so that that is a major challenge i think if you are maybe working in like biology and more of

01:43:02.960 | you know life sciences and things like that you do have to somewhat work within that system

01:43:09.360 | whereas something like computer science and deep learning and things like that

01:43:12.880 | it's definitely much easier to work outside of that system and you know you can change a more

01:43:18.480 | unconventional path so yeah i mean there's plenty of um there's plenty of literal high school

01:43:23.840 | dropouts who have gone on to very successful careers in deep learning research exactly yeah

01:43:29.920 | so that is the that is a challenge if you're in the more yeah more in the biomedical field but

01:43:36.480 | yeah sometimes you just have to uh work with that system and um i mean yeah i definitely i think um

01:43:44.880 | and i think i think like also it just depends on yeah if you still think it depends per person

01:43:52.240 | right like i still feel like i did get a lot out of the commercial system which i i guess maybe for

01:43:59.600 | some people that may be kind of interesting but like like i still feel like i learned a lot going

01:44:06.640 | through the bachelor's program and then even throughout the phd you know getting more

01:44:11.600 | experience with research and you know learning how to do good research i mean we'll come back to this

01:44:16.640 | but your phd supervisor is not at all a conventional person that's true that's true yeah um he also had

01:44:23.680 | an unconventional background and the lab is definitely unconventional but so like i think

01:44:29.760 | there's there's a balance of like you know what opportunities are or what paths are more

01:44:35.200 | informational and what paths are unconventional and you know some aspects may be more conventional

01:44:39.920 | and some may not be and it just depends again on per person and what works best for them but i think

01:44:46.000 | i think i still have gotten a lot out of the experience so it's not like anything that i regret

01:44:51.440 | you know going down through this prevention and so for you the okay so i just want to come back to

01:44:56.640 | this so you did the geology and stuff at um community college and did you do some paleontology

01:45:04.080 | and astronomy at that community college as well yeah i didn't take it i didn't take an officially

01:45:09.600 | like a paleontology class and like there was i think part of the geology there's some paleontology

01:45:13.520 | and stuff like that did you end up with any kind of degree or diploma or something from that yeah

01:45:18.160 | so from the community college i obtained three associates degrees so those are like two year

01:45:24.720 | degrees um so in what period of time uh this is in 2015 wait you got three degrees in one year

01:45:35.600 | uh well no this still considers like so basically from 2011 to 2014 i was you know that was from

01:45:43.600 | seven to ten i was you know doing this sort of two classes per semester situation yeah um and then

01:45:52.480 | from 2014 i graduated high school and then from 2014 to 2015 i was taking like four classes per

01:46:00.640 | first semester and at the end of 2015 i got these uh for three associate degrees three associates

01:46:10.080 | degrees okay so what were the what were those areas what the three areas uh general science

01:46:16.640 | math and physical sciences and foreign language studies okay so then you went into um the bachelor's

01:46:24.160 | program yes i went into bachelor's in 2016 so i took another year just to finish up some prerequisites

01:46:29.920 | okay things like that and then did you do that bachelor's at uh just to clarify and i know i

01:46:34.480 | think a lot of the sort of like the problem was like yeah ideally community college in terms of

01:46:39.360 | like when i was taking like two classes per semester that definitely was like kind of you know

01:46:43.520 | very slow i think i think that's like it took it took a bit of time so that's why yeah then i was

01:46:48.000 | like i really need to get out of high school as soon as possible yeah yeah because you were

01:46:52.640 | frustrated right yeah so i think that was another issue like when you say like oh yeah like oh it's

01:46:57.920 | kind of slow like i think that was kind of where it comes from is like yeah the two classes kind of

01:47:02.720 | absolutely and to that rule that was like placed on you yeah required you to go slow and in hindsight

01:47:11.440 | i guess you're saying you don't see any benefit from that yeah yeah so then you did the bachelor's

01:47:18.800 | program so what so so what what was the bachelor's program and where was that was that uc davis yes

01:47:24.240 | that was uc davis so i technically again um i didn't have when i joined i technically didn't

01:47:30.720 | have all the the prereqs for a biomedical engineering program so i technically joined as

01:47:35.760 | biotechnology which was like my alternate major on my application but i really wanted to do

01:47:40.560 | biomedical engineering like i just really wanted to do that so i managed to like fit in like all

01:47:45.760 | the prereqs and get the schedule worked out and i changed my major when i joined into biomedical

01:47:50.640 | engineering and like i was taking you know classes over the summer i took like three classes over

01:47:56.400 | that summer than i was there and i managed to graduate within uh two years so like you know

01:48:02.800 | typically it's like you know when once you transfer it's usually another two years um so i managed to

01:48:08.720 | finish up in those two years even with some of the missing prereqs because of the fact that i

01:48:13.680 | managed to make it up over the summer so yeah that's gonna balance that up and and to be clear

01:48:18.000 | when you say um you always wanted to do research i mean this is not some um implanted memory you

01:48:26.480 | believe now when you're in your ted x talk when you were nine this is exactly what you said you

01:48:31.280 | said i'm gonna finish a phd before i get my driver's license which you may yet do thanks

01:48:37.440 | to completely failing to get a driver's license in the normal time yeah yeah i mean i don't really i

01:48:44.080 | haven't had the need to right now and get a driver's license so that's why you guys can

01:48:48.160 | and you certainly have a need to not get it unless you fail to meet your childhood dreams yeah yeah

01:48:56.160 | okay so you okay so two years of bachelors um and you know i guess the thing about

01:49:10.160 | home schooling and stuff is unless you're i mean maybe your parents did it differently

01:49:15.440 | but at least in our case we don't really follow a curriculum it's kind of just like oh whatever

01:49:19.440 | comes along um did you did you find that a lot of stuff in bachelors was like just revision or did

01:49:28.000 | you find a lot of it was stuff like you didn't have the necessary prerequisites to know what's

01:49:32.080 | going on or what was the experience of that yeah um andrew i'm just thinking back here you're now

01:49:40.560 | like what like 14 years old or how old are you when you're doing it at that time yeah i was uh

01:49:47.600 | i was 13 years old 13 yeah um i think once i got to my bachelors i think for the most part it was

01:49:59.200 | mostly new content i think there were certainly some you know ideas and concepts that we have

01:50:06.240 | you know encountered in the past um and so there's definitely some ideas here and there that like

01:50:13.120 | yeah i couldn't already knew uh because yeah it's true that i definitely i think it was also like

01:50:18.000 | yeah i think there's also the aspect it's like i've learned whatever i feel like so like um you know

01:50:22.720 | there's so like there are some ideas in here and they're like oh i've talked i've learned this

01:50:27.360 | already but like for the most part i think it was mostly new content so yeah i don't know um

01:50:35.520 | yeah i think there's also like yeah so a lot of that content maybe is also maybe also it's

01:50:42.800 | a little bit harder to actually learn you know just based on online resources and stuff like

01:50:47.760 | that it's like even some of these classes they don't some of the content don't even like properly

01:50:55.440 | follow a textbook or things like that it's more like of course like it's more like the professors

01:51:00.480 | are teaching stuff and like and at that point you're like also starting to get i think more into like

01:51:05.920 | part of it is like you're arguing a little bit more into cutting-edge stuff and things like that

01:51:10.640 | so it's i think it's actually harder to learn like and this is like again more like um

01:51:17.680 | you know junior and senior year so like these are like upper upper upper year like upper class

01:51:24.480 | like yeah these are like you know more specialized classes like again

01:51:28.560 | most of the on you know the freshman and sophomore stuff you know a lot of that you can easily like

01:51:35.360 | learn from online material but i think once you get to some of the more specialized material um

01:51:40.560 | it may be hard i don't know like again i guess maybe someone it just depends i think on the on

01:51:46.640 | the field and stuff like that but i think but yeah i think at that point so then again there's

01:51:52.960 | like again there were certain idea like certain stuff like if you're going to be searching a

01:51:56.880 | particular field then you'll know a lot about that and then of course if the class covers it is like

01:52:00.640 | you know there's no point but like you get the you get the sort of i guess broad perspective of other

01:52:05.680 | research fields as well and things like that yeah which interesting which can be really helpful too

01:52:10.880 | as well so okay let me now switch to the social experience of being a 13 year old at bachelor's

01:52:17.600 | and i will start by contrasting two cartoon versions of what that social experience might be

01:52:25.360 | i suspect that the nine-year-old tanish in that ted x talk if asked to describe what it would look

01:52:33.600 | like if tanish got to go to do a bachelor's would be like oh my god i'm going to be surrounded by

01:52:42.320 | you know fascinating people interested in my field we're going to spend all of our time talking about

01:52:48.000 | really interesting scientific concepts where else a you know don't be in a hurry you know

01:52:57.760 | parent of a friend might be like oh my god it's going to be a social nightmare for them

01:53:05.280 | they're going to be the butt of jokes they're not going to understand what's going on around them

01:53:09.440 | and they'll be in the midst of adult ideas which a young mind is not ready for um yeah

01:53:17.920 | where on that spectrum was you know did you find yourself what was the experience like for you

01:53:24.640 | as a kid you know yeah um i think i think for the most part it was again completely

01:53:36.000 | um i mean i think socially mostly mostly it was okay i think it was um again interacting

01:53:42.800 | with again it's not like in i'm i've interacted with people of this age these sort of age groups

01:53:49.040 | before you know through community college and things like that um i don't i think there there

01:53:56.800 | there were some you know sometimes there there may be you know a little bit of friction in certain

01:54:02.720 | aspects of things um so for example like you know sometimes you know students may want to work

01:54:12.800 | on projects you know for example overnight at someone's house or apartment or whatever

01:54:20.320 | door or whatever and i would maybe i would you know i wasn't as comfortable as my parents were

01:54:26.160 | definitely not comfortable with that and there's also all the like stuff with like um yeah there's

01:54:33.680 | also that stuff with like um formals and bowls and student clubs and all that i guess like you

01:54:42.880 | wouldn't really have got to participate in i was involved in like um we have we had like

01:54:52.000 | a biomedical engineering club so i was involved in that club um and i think there's like maybe one

01:55:00.640 | a couple one or two other clubs so i'll go to like some of the socials and stuff like that

01:55:04.880 | and of course things like going to bars and stuff like that obviously i can't i'm not going to

01:55:09.840 | participate in those and sorts of things you know there are certain again that's true even now

01:55:15.680 | obviously um so there are certain um social activities that i cannot participate in but

01:55:21.600 | like i still also have plenty of other social activities that i participate in so um it wasn't

01:55:28.720 | like certainly yeah i don't think i wasn't like missing out too much on you were feeling like

01:55:35.440 | yeah you weren't feeling like you were missing out on something important or feeling jealous

01:55:43.040 | not really i think yeah i mean certainly there are some aspects of like yeah i don't know

01:55:49.200 | for the most part like i managed to like make it up by like going to a lot of these social activities

01:55:54.720 | and you know even interacting during class and stuff like that and did you get some of that

01:55:59.520 | like intellectually exciting engagement about your field of interest that you were hoping for

01:56:10.720 | yeah i mean socially like i mean again just from social stuff where i don't it's not like i'm always

01:56:15.760 | talking about research and things things like that i mean of course there's definitely that

01:56:20.560 | engagement i'm getting from going to classes and talking to professors and you know even talking to

01:56:26.400 | um other undergraduate researchers or even some of the you know phd mentors or whatever so i do get

01:56:35.520 | that engagement but then also a lot of the engagement sort of socialization and engagement

01:56:40.800 | that i have with other uh students and at the same time it was just regular i get socialization i

01:56:49.120 | guess i don't know there's nothing like it's not i'm not always talking about i guess you know

01:56:53.920 | biomedical engineering there's you know i'm talking about other things too so you know

01:56:59.280 | well you and i always talk about deep learning so what is that that's always true we

01:57:05.440 | we they're like during the meetings we especially at the beginning you talk about you know

01:57:08.960 | what you're up to we talk about what we're up to and things i guess it's always true

01:57:13.760 | i'm very happy talking about deep learning this so that's probably my fault

01:57:17.760 | i mean they like talking about all this research and stuff too but like yeah i mean i just i just

01:57:25.600 | try to balance everything i guess yeah everything balanced but it sounds like overall that that

01:57:30.640 | that experience was closer to what a starry-eyed nine-year-old tanishk was hoping for than then

01:57:37.760 | what a you know the conservative parent might have been worried about i think so yeah i think so

01:57:45.920 | i think i think there was more i think there's more like the other thing i think is more like

01:57:53.840 | things like um in terms of like what was maybe more stressful or more concerning was actually

01:58:01.120 | more like actual work like things like um just the workload because you know i'm taking like again

01:58:06.640 | four classes and again most of most of the sort of work is actually not the learning it's more of

01:58:13.120 | actually doing whole work and you know uh essays and projects and stuff like that and you know

01:58:20.000 | that's not a lot of it is not actually learning the concepts it's just like actually doing that

01:58:24.480 | work and so yeah um it's a lot of work yeah it takes time there's a lot of workloads that that

01:58:32.080 | can sometimes be a little bit stressful and then and there's certainly again there were some you

01:58:36.320 | know like i mentioned some sometimes there will be friction between um you know with certain people

01:58:42.320 | so you know it's about sometimes managing those social dynamics so there's certainly more i think

01:58:47.280 | there was definitely some social dynamics that i had to manage when i was in in bafflers um but

01:58:55.280 | for the most part you know i think it was a value valuable and interesting and engaging experience

01:59:01.680 | um as a whole but or are there like you know in terms of both the being of the bachelors and

01:59:10.400 | the process to getting there in hindsight are there now you know regrets or things you

01:59:16.880 | wish you had done differently or do you feel overall like the path you talk is

01:59:20.720 | you know feels like the right one in hindsight

01:59:24.800 | think of anything yeah nothing comes immediately to mind in terms of like regrets or anything

01:59:33.840 | like that i think yeah i think for the most part i think in terms of the bachelors program yeah i

01:59:41.360 | think it did what what i wanted to do i think okay so maybe like one um one thing was potentially

01:59:51.920 | so at the time it seemed like a regret but now i don't think it like so like i think a lot of it

01:59:59.760 | was like um you know being a researcher i even actually during my bachelors i unfortunately

02:00:08.080 | didn't get to spend as much time working on research as i wanted to um because there was

02:00:14.000 | a lot of classwork and especially uh you know yeah especially in these last two years in a typical

02:00:19.920 | bachelors program these last two years are especially busy in terms of like for example

02:00:24.400 | the final year we have like a senior design project which is basically like we have to design

02:00:29.200 | a device and build it and supposed to meet kind of needs and all this sort of it's a whole process

02:00:33.760 | it's a year-long process and that's like a private and it takes a lot of time so there's a lot of

02:00:38.240 | things that like took a lot of time and didn't so i didn't get much opportunity to do research

02:00:43.840 | and so uh you know things like oh um maybe i don't have any many papers when i when i graduate or

02:00:52.400 | anything like that like sometimes and you know it can be hard to like you know compete for things

02:00:57.440 | like fellowships and stuff like that when it comes to that and eventually like i was originally

02:01:02.240 | working in synthetic biology um and in the lab that was interested that i was working in and

02:01:08.560 | i wanted to continue in that lab but then yeah i think the professor was also maybe a little bit

02:01:13.120 | concerned about certain things and wasn't willing to have me on um based on your youth or based on

02:01:21.120 | no i think more based on the sort of research i'll put around i don't know i think you know

02:01:26.320 | because you were so busy with all the work you had to do for your bachelors

02:01:30.960 | but i was like i think he was like yeah so i think that must have happened like oh i shouldn't

02:01:36.080 | have spent so much time on classes and stuff like that like that was like my thing like oh

02:01:40.480 | why did i spend so much time i should spend more time on research but in hindsight that allowed me

02:01:46.080 | to pivot more directly towards deep learning so in hindsight like i think it was kind of good that

02:01:53.200 | i actually you know was maybe did it yeah that that didn't work out and allowed me to pivot into

02:02:00.640 | this new field where i feel like it's you know it's very promising and something that i really

02:02:06.080 | enjoyed i mean the other thing was like a few like synthetic biology was like maybe more on

02:02:11.280 | maybe could be more exhausting because it's like the sort of that's the sort of research where you

02:02:16.800 | do have to spend like eight to eight to six or eight to even like something like you know i spend

02:02:22.320 | like 12 hours in the in the lab every day you know doing stuff and also like it seems from the outside

02:02:28.240 | like synthbio is exciting but also still pretty speculative as far as i can tell where else deep

02:02:35.440 | learning is changing the world right now i mean i'm still pretty excited about it but like yeah i can

02:02:43.920 | uh but and you know so i'm like that's what i mean by speculative i'm not saying it's not going to

02:02:48.800 | turn out but like it's like time spent working on ai in medicine is very likely to have a significant

02:02:55.440 | impact on society where else synthbio feels like i don't know kind of feels like working on quantum

02:03:01.360 | computing or something i mean i still think that bio is probably more like further along in quantum

02:03:06.320 | computing but yeah i see which in the end um but so i think in the end it turned out for the best

02:03:13.280 | but i think at the time that was definitely kind of like i had i think i maybe had a little bit of

02:03:18.720 | that concern i was like oh did i did i do the best thing here and the other thing is like yeah like

02:03:23.280 | things like competing for fellowships and stuff because you know you see they're competing with

02:03:26.800 | that was a non-made made a challenge is you're competing with all these students who have gone

02:03:33.600 | through the whole process right they they they've gone from high school maybe they've even done some

02:03:38.160 | sometimes they give research opportunities in high school so they have some research opportunities

02:03:41.360 | there then they've done the typical bachelor's program so they've done the four years and

02:03:46.960 | usually they join a lab by the end of like their first year and so they have three years of doing

02:03:52.080 | research and so at the end of their bachelor's program they've probably had already at least

02:03:58.240 | one first authored paper and so when you compare on paper my resume to these other folks a lot of

02:04:07.520 | times they will select you know those other folks because they already have all these papers in this

02:04:11.840 | sort of experience whereas i don't of course that i mean i'm in a whole different situation in terms

02:04:18.160 | of my background and i guess my potential as well but that's not what they're looking at so there's

02:04:23.520 | also that issue as well which for a long time it would you know i didn't have any fellowship it was

02:04:29.840 | hard i did have a fellowship an internal fellowship for mr davis but i wasn't able to get any external

02:04:35.680 | i couldn't get any external fellowships for for this reason so there was sort of that issue as

02:04:40.560 | well where i was like oh maybe this was this is a bit of a challenge and it's hard to compare i

02:04:46.160 | guess for these folks to compare but i mean it must have felt it must have felt like a bit of a

02:04:52.080 | serious kick in the guts at the time like it must have been a real good point yes it certainly did

02:04:56.720 | i think you know at that time i was like certainly like thinking about what it was going to do and

02:05:01.520 | you know i was like yeah in terms of like getting fellowships in terms of finding a lab all these

02:05:05.840 | sorts of things this is at the beginning of my phd basically and it was certainly a major major

02:05:10.880 | challenge uh and having said that it's not like it's not the kind of disappointment that is unknown

02:05:18.640 | for children to deal with like kids in sport deal with that all the time right they're like

02:05:23.680 | didn't get into the first team or whatever it's it's it's not necessarily a bad thing

02:05:29.440 | to have some experience of finding out should be and at the time it was all like a new experience

02:05:34.400 | either it's not like like it's just overall like i haven't you'd think you'd be surprised

02:05:40.240 | like i haven't gotten many scholarships or anything like that you people think oh you must

02:05:45.440 | have easily gotten like tons of scholarships and stuff like that but surprisingly i i've not been

02:05:50.880 | able to you know get those sorts of um opportunities luckily for you know undergrad i didn't actually

02:05:57.280 | get one scholarship that definitely helped and things like that but like you know it's not like

02:06:01.200 | i've you know i've heard definitely from a lot of people like oh wow you must have like gotten like

02:06:05.600 | tons of scholarships based on your achievements like that's not this actually the scenario i've

02:06:09.440 | been rejecting him from lots of different scholarships lots of different opportunities

02:06:12.880 | so it was not even at that time it wasn't something that was new to me um it was so it was

02:06:18.160 | certainly a saddening experience i think each time you get rejected it still kind of stings a bit

02:06:22.480 | it's not like oh i don't care about that but you know and eventually i think it all worked out

02:06:27.520 | through the best and i think that's what what matters at the end so you know you just kind of

02:06:31.520 | have to even when you get rejections you have to keep your hopes up that it eventually works out

02:06:37.360 | because it tends to eventually work out so that was yeah you know i'm lucky that that's what happened

02:06:42.960 | so before we um talk about like the phd more i'd love to just go back over some things that

02:06:51.680 | i was curious about during during those earlier years um one is um the the uh the time you went

02:07:04.080 | on the conan o'brien show so for those who don't remember conan was huge you know he was the big

02:07:11.120 | late night show guy and um and you were his guest um so yeah how did how did that happen

02:07:19.680 | yeah so um so actually i was on this uh show uh child genius which was this kind of competition

02:07:30.400 | for many different child prodigies and so i was in order to actually promote that show that's kind

02:07:35.120 | of what um you know that's why i was invited there um and so yeah that's kind of it just came through

02:07:44.960 | that and so yeah they were they had a few they were trying to get some of the different testins

02:07:50.800 | to go on various late night shows and i guess or different various shows i guess like i think yeah

02:07:56.320 | there's like conan and like i think one like the late late show and like i think ellen and things

02:08:00.560 | with dad so they had yeah they had they had some of the kids go on different shows so i got to go on

02:08:05.600 | conan um yeah and so we have child genius here in australia i wonder if it's the same thing it's

02:08:12.160 | kind of like a kind of a quiz show where they do like stem things and memory things and

02:08:18.960 | what pretty much yeah i think all of the same show um it was originally a a british show um

02:08:26.080 | and that's the original show was from from britain and then they they wanted to do it also in the us

02:08:33.840 | so uh i think they did two seasons of the show i was in the first season yeah we did two or three

02:08:40.240 | here as well and weirdly enough the guy who won the first like we i kind of live in the middle

02:08:44.800 | of nowhere a bit but funnily enough the guy who won the first series in australia lives like

02:08:49.440 | i don't know five or ten minute drive from your house it's really random

02:08:54.640 | so do you do do you know that person i kind of don't i always feel like i should reach out

02:08:58.720 | but i don't know if it's like lame or not yeah it's funny that people now kind of recognize me

02:09:07.760 | from these appearances and it's sometimes i mean it can be kind of nice to be like oh it's like

02:09:13.600 | it's just kind of an additional connection like i mean they're people who are in the ml community

02:09:18.400 | and they're like oh i've ever seen you on the show it's cool to see you here now it's like

02:09:21.840 | how did you go in the show i think you you probably know like i think it was like a bojan

02:09:27.840 | um you know on twitter i think um or you know he's like the kaggle grandmaster who's like um

02:09:33.760 | you know he's that fg boost guy as i like to say um anyway he i remember once he treated me he's

02:09:39.040 | like oh yeah i remember watching this show um you know a while back and you know we were rooting for

02:09:44.480 | you and things like that it was like kind of funny to see and i think he also was kind of interested

02:09:49.120 | and then there was like i think someone yeah i'm one of like one of the collaborators i'm working

02:09:52.960 | with right now also he was like when i i met him i think at like i think it was at one of the

02:09:58.800 | i think it was at icml in the virtual conference or something and he like almost immediately

02:10:03.840 | recognized me it was kind of so it's kind of still funny to recognize me um and how did you go in the

02:10:08.880 | show oh he didn't i was like um so there was like eight rounds i got eliminated after the fifth round

02:10:17.040 | unfortunately oh not bad by one point or something you got a little bit but uh yeah it was you know

02:10:23.200 | yeah still sometimes kick myself about that but like you know it's all good at least in the one

02:10:29.840 | i had here a lot of it seemed to be about memory and it seemed like knowing some basic kind of

02:10:34.880 | mnemonic memory palace kind of techniques we've got you a long way did you is that the same for

02:10:39.600 | yours um yeah but it was i think i think yeah it was different it was still like the sheer amount

02:10:44.480 | of stuff that you needed to have memorized it was definitely a little bit difficult especially the

02:10:50.480 | other issue was like at that time again i was liking i think i was still taking like again like

02:10:56.000 | maybe two uh it just happened to me this summer but at the same time i was still taking like two

02:11:01.360 | summer classes and you know these are like eight week classes that go by very quickly so i'm like

02:11:06.080 | trying to keep up with both my summer classes as well you know this quiz show so i think that

02:11:11.920 | definitely got a little bit tough i mean you know is you know the other contestants definitely did

02:11:17.440 | not have anything like that to worry about nothing uh there was definitely that very you know i of

02:11:24.320 | course i felt like you know my my college classes definitely had a higher priority but um i think um

02:11:31.680 | so i think that was like maybe one of the reasons why it was a little i struggled a bit you know

02:11:36.480 | just because like you know it's like a week it's basically weekly so like after you do like it's

02:11:41.440 | like or like every one or two weeks so it's like one week of one subject then you get the material

02:11:46.720 | for the next subject and you've got it like you know this is like okay this is what kind of material

02:11:50.480 | for the next subject so you gotta study that so it's like every week it's got to study and then

02:11:54.480 | of course i had my classes and then sometimes they'll come to your house and film you know

02:11:59.200 | because they want to have all right yeah they do all the background is whatever it was it was a very

02:12:03.200 | chaotic um so yeah in spite of all that you know i guess you know i managed to send my well i mean

02:12:09.920 | there were still i mean still some of the memory stuff i i'm still kind of like amazed that i could

02:12:14.880 | do some of that stuff still did you learn like explicitly at some point some of those kind of

02:12:20.560 | memory palace techniques or kind of uh not you know number lists techniques yeah yeah exactly

02:12:27.200 | so like i mean i actually did they teach you that or that was something you would already

02:12:31.120 | know yeah i never actually learned anything like that in the past um and then it was

02:12:37.920 | it was yeah so i never actually did any memory palace stuff in the past um i think maybe something

02:12:43.360 | that probably should explore even more even further now a lot of it i do tend to just do

02:12:48.080 | road memorization and it seems to work very seems to work fine for me overall like i've memorized

02:12:54.080 | speeches that you know like 20 20 minute speeches and i can memorize them in like two hours just

02:12:59.600 | road memorization and i just managed to do that like um you know so i've never had an issue with

02:13:05.040 | that kind of thing but there were some parts where like so there was like one part was like a deck of

02:13:09.760 | cards and memorizing a deck of cards that one was a little bit harder to do road memorization yeah

02:13:14.720 | absolutely yeah so so i mean the day before the day before the actual competition or the actual

02:13:22.240 | quiz um we decided to train change strategy and i studied how the memory palace method worked and

02:13:30.000 | this is like yeah one or two yeah i mean there's no way you can do that without hemonic techniques

02:13:35.920 | so yeah this is like one or two days before the actual quiz and you know of course that's not

02:13:41.120 | including the time going to fly and all the hotel and all that so this is one or two days before

02:13:45.680 | like yeah about a day before and i i just studied the uh memory palace technique we came up with

02:13:51.440 | this sort of memory palace and and i was trying to play around with it and i was like starting to get

02:13:56.560 | like you know 49 50 of the cards now correct and i was like starting you know i said now i was like

02:14:01.760 | okay i feel pretty confident about this before you know i was not i was only getting like maybe half

02:14:04.880 | of the cards and like i'm really struggling and with the memory palace it really seemed to work

02:14:09.040 | i said it turns out for the actual competition i did the actual quiz and did the actual memorization

02:14:13.600 | i think we were giving like an hour to memorize it or something like that i think it was about an

02:14:17.280 | hour yeah i think it was an hour and i managed to get all 52 correct nice well some people might not

02:14:23.200 | be familiar with this so can you explain how what a memory palace technique is or maybe specifically

02:14:30.160 | what technique you use to memorize the whole deck of cards because a lot of people would be if they

02:14:35.360 | aren't unfamiliar the technique will be like oh okay this guy's a total teen mess but actually

02:14:40.320 | anybody can do this right yeah yeah yeah so the way i had it set up was like so you have like you

02:14:46.960 | know if it's like a you know ace of space you know like an ace of yeah ace of spades or something

02:14:52.000 | like that you know basically like that you have you assign it you know like ace you assign to some

02:14:58.240 | sort of um you assign different characteristics like ace could be like for example maybe a person

02:15:04.560 | some somebody you know or something like this i think that's how i had it set like the ace was a

02:15:07.840 | person and spades would be like maybe something um related to spades so i don't know like you know

02:15:13.200 | some novel or something like this you know something related so so the end of person like is also

02:15:17.200 | probably related so like if it's an eighth maybe you'd be something maybe a person whose name starts

02:15:21.520 | with an a or something like that yeah and then what you do is that you know you have like in this case

02:15:26.160 | cards in a deck so uh the way i had it set up was like you know you have 52 locations in say your

02:15:33.360 | house and then you know they're in some sort of order and then you kind of um you kind of imagine

02:15:39.200 | that at each um location you you put this sort of card so by putting the card you're thinking of

02:15:47.040 | whatever object or person or whatever you have with whatever action you know based on you know

02:15:51.760 | ace of spades it's like some person with the spade or something like something some sort of action

02:15:56.320 | in the person and then you put them at that sort of location in right or your palace your memory

02:16:01.280 | palace in your imagination exactly in your imagination palace which i had is just my house

02:16:07.360 | and then you have these different locations and then when you're remembering it you can kind of

02:16:12.320 | just walk along that path and you know you kind of just visually are walking along that path and

02:16:18.480 | like okay you're at you know for example you're at the garage okay now in the garage we're supposed

02:16:23.200 | to be there you know you've already placed that person he comes much easier because you you know

02:16:27.120 | you have like a person you have an action it's more like tangible it's much easier to memorize

02:16:31.520 | and say ace of spades like exactly and there's also segways from one to the next like exactly

02:16:37.920 | maybe kind of like maybe sometimes some people try to like maybe come up come up with like a story

02:16:42.640 | or something like that to just kind of you know further you know cement that sort of uh you know

02:16:50.560 | that pattern did you ever read the book moon walking with einstein i have not that's that's

02:16:57.360 | great yeah it's um so i don't know if you've heard of ed cook ed cook was like the

02:17:01.760 | greatest memory world memory champion of all time like one i can't remember five or six world

02:17:09.600 | championships or something and basically he he worked with a guy called joshua four who was a

02:17:15.360 | journalist slash author who considered himself a very bad memory and bought josh for these memory

02:17:23.760 | techniques over a one-year period and then josh for entered the u.s national memory championships

02:17:32.400 | to see how he went you know and um it's a quite a delightful book actually and i've actually met

02:17:41.440 | josh she's a really super guy he he went on to found uh batless obscura you know that fantastic

02:17:47.680 | i think yeah i think that's like all kinds of interesting kind of bankoids about it looking

02:17:53.440 | so yeah yeah and uh yeah his his point was basically yeah and anybody can yeah do this

02:18:03.520 | to an extremely high level if you just learn how um and i've spent a significant chunk of time

02:18:10.640 | learning that as well the more you know there's like it's also useful for learning about your

02:18:17.200 | own psychology because you learn about how brains remember things that are like

02:18:20.640 | funny ridiculous violent related to celebrities related to family members whatever so you kind of

02:18:28.240 | come up with a story with the properties of things that our brains are good at remembering

02:18:32.960 | yeah yeah some of my house is written down the exact thing i have to find that like there's a

02:18:39.280 | i have a paper of like the exact uh yeah what i've assigned you know for the different cards

02:18:44.000 | and then the other thing is like i was kind of surprised like even with memory palace

02:18:47.280 | how long you can remember it i think like maybe yes there were so i was still able to remember it

02:18:53.600 | which just like had a surprising like you know and if you then follow a spaced memory technique

02:18:59.680 | for yeah if you then follow a spaced memory technique for revising it you will literally

02:19:03.440 | know yeah then you'll remember our feed yeah but i mean i i didn't really care if i could

02:19:08.720 | put that forever i i guess there's something important you you definitely could do that and

02:19:13.600 | you know yeah um so i don't know that's kind of interesting um so actually talking of which

02:19:19.120 | do you used you know spaced repetition at all or have you um i mean i think i dabbled in it for a

02:19:27.040 | bit um but you know i think it's just like something like this so like for me yeah i think

02:19:36.640 | this i i definitely still want to investigate it i guess it's like i think there's a lot of this

02:19:41.280 | like sort of system and also like um and it's definitely something that it's like something

02:19:46.880 | i definitely need to get started with and i still haven't you know dying i think i you know i've

02:19:51.360 | definitely dabbled with it like i think i maybe made a few cards like an anky or something like

02:19:57.280 | i think there was like an anky droid app or something like this yeah there is an anky droid app

02:20:01.520 | and i was like playing around with it um so let me just quickly explain to people who might not be

02:20:06.320 | familiar this is just like a really simple idea that came out of the 19th century research

02:20:11.200 | by a guy called uh having house it basically says if you try to remember something um that you

02:20:20.720 | previously learned after one day and then after three days and then after a week and then after

02:20:25.360 | three weeks and then after a couple of months you know this kind of exponential increasingly

02:20:29.120 | time scale yeah you'll remember it forever with you know super linearly decreasing amounts of

02:20:37.680 | effort um so yeah i i actually would love to uh uh encourage you to try it because um my

02:20:49.680 | my daughter does it you know and it's so cool teaching her and her friend math and knowing

02:20:55.200 | they do their anky cards each day so i know everything i've ever taught them they definitely

02:21:00.880 | remember all of it because if they didn't you know then their anky would be revising it at the

02:21:07.520 | right time and my wife's yeah thank you stuff is like at a certain point like doesn't your deck

02:21:14.480 | become unnaturally large and like very difficult to to deal with no not if you manage it carefully

02:21:21.360 | because you have exponentially increasing just time distances between h1 it's yeah that doesn't

02:21:28.800 | happen so i learned chinese i learned chinese and i have a bad memory i would say i don't know

02:21:33.760 | everybody's memory is pretty similar statistically speaking but yeah i think mine maybe is slightly

02:21:37.840 | worse than usual but i learned 6 000 chinese characters faster than anybody at the chinese

02:21:44.160 | university had ever heard of basically by doing anky and not just anky but also using a

02:21:50.080 | fairly sophisticated um mnemonic methodology that had been developed at the university of huai

02:21:57.440 | and um yeah i still remember those characters and one of the things i really like about it tanishic

02:22:05.440 | is that it forces you to like get serious about recognizing your both capabilities and limitations

02:22:15.600 | which is to say if your anky deck is too much then you are trying to learn more things than you can

02:22:20.160 | remember you know um so then you have to make a choice like okay you're doing things optimally

02:22:27.360 | it's too big so you now have to decide what things do you want to learn because you can't

02:22:33.440 | you know so then you kind of don't end up studying so much that you can't remember it so right i i

02:22:41.840 | like that about it you know and um yeah my wife's studying for masters at the moment she's already

02:22:47.600 | got a phd so she's keeping busy and she's using anky for the first time and she's just like oh my

02:22:52.640 | god i don't have to study for exams anymore you know she gets 100 percent because she knows she

02:22:57.600 | knows it all i knew like like uh medical commonly that reason i don't know how successful it is i

02:23:04.800 | assume it's pretty successful if everyone's doing it but yeah i don't know why it's so popular in

02:23:09.520 | medicine but almost nothing else but i feel like for claire you know when she does that for the next

02:23:14.640 | 12 years everything she's there's not everything that she's learned to remember everything that

02:23:19.760 | she's learned that she wants to remember to remember so i always say to her don't add a

02:23:23.760 | card until like unless you want to remember it forever or your teacher tells you this is

02:23:30.880 | something you do need to know um so anyway sorry for the slight diversion is there a way of benefit

02:23:39.360 | like i don't like for example medical school students they like tend to uh like download

02:23:46.400 | anky decks online and things like that and i guess mine like things like yeah that's a bad idea

02:23:51.840 | yeah like what is it like because then i've talked to other people and they're like well

02:23:55.520 | you know it's maybe you know like you're still memorizing it and still remaining in memory so

02:24:01.520 | like i guess that's another thing i was like writing it down yourself versus using other

02:24:06.640 | people and you guess it's also yeah yeah no no do it yourself so actually there's a guy called

02:24:11.680 | peter wasniak who rediscovered the work of ebbing house independently and has dedicated his life to

02:24:17.840 | you know practicing it and studying it and he's got a great website called super memo dot guru

02:24:24.800 | and he's got 20 tips for like actually learning stuff and one of the key tips is like yeah like

02:24:32.960 | create your own cards and like they need context you know so like for my chinese i listened to a

02:24:38.160 | lot of podcasts in chinese and every character i learned that you know i would have the sentence

02:24:42.800 | where i first learned about it as part of the card for claire's cards you know there's always

02:24:49.120 | a drawing or a snapshot from a youtube video or something of like this is where you like this

02:24:55.920 | and that you've got the context you've got the reason to remember it you've got the

02:25:01.360 | that sense of like oh this is what i was doing at the time you know all the stuff that helps your

02:25:05.520 | brain yeah if you download anchor cards you miss all that it's yeah okay you know yeah yeah i think

02:25:15.920 | it's definitely this you know the sort of things like well like i think also like i don't like um

02:25:20.320 | i think like radic made a whole anchor card sort of situation for you know fast ci course

02:25:27.760 | she he had like a quiz website and all and ai quizzes.com or something yeah yeah that was doing

02:25:33.600 | it and i think um i was getting emails and then i think it was doing it i don't know did i think

02:25:38.400 | like the emails stopped or something so i don't know if i messed up something or if it just like

02:25:42.560 | stop taking emails so i think there's a good reminder for me to go back and check that as

02:25:46.960 | well because that obviously the ai stuff is stuff that i definitely want to you know make sure the

02:25:51.440 | other thing i'll say though is if you're using the things you learn you remember it like i never use

02:25:58.160 | anki or anything for like any programming topic or whatever i just i just code

02:26:04.320 | because i hear like a lot of times um sometimes yeah programmers use it for example to memorize

02:26:12.400 | apis and things like that so as you're saying you you mentioned that because seems like that's

02:26:16.800 | another app a common application i think like people like sometimes there are programmers who do that

02:26:21.120 | so yeah i'm curious why i guess you just never i guess as you're using it like do you ever feel

02:26:26.960 | that they can maybe yeah there may be certain apis or certain like commands and stuff that you may

02:26:30.800 | feel like yeah i've just never found that i i yeah because i'm using it anyway so after that uh

02:26:38.880 | sorry i hadn't quite realized uh you wrote child genius and it's a sign of show and that's super

02:26:43.280 | interesting to me but i want to yeah so coming back to okay so you're on conan um now i don't

02:26:48.480 | know if i'm being ridiculous or over sensitive or whatever but my reaction to seeing you on conan

02:26:56.880 | was i felt um pretty mad actually i felt annoyed at him because

02:27:03.760 | it's not that he said anything rude to you but i definitely felt like he was

02:27:11.840 | like i don't know what i don't know what you're saying in american history i'd say

02:27:15.200 | taking the piss you know he was like basically imply you know laughing at the fact that you're

02:27:22.800 | interested in physics or laughing at the fact that you want to get a phd um yeah i mean what i mean

02:27:32.240 | did you did you feel that or did you feel it's all good or how i'm looking back do you feel

02:27:36.800 | differently to how exactly i think you may be like the first person who's ever said anything

02:27:43.120 | like that before so honestly i'm kind of surprised that you you you think that way i don't know it's

02:27:48.720 | like every like i've had i mean if you didn't feel that way then that's good experience on the show

02:27:56.080 | right i mean he was you know you know i mean he seemed like it's really nice to you backstage

02:28:00.880 | and whatnot right well i didn't the other thing was like you know when you was it was a comedy

02:28:05.920 | show and you know part of it is we are kind of we're kind of in on the joke too right like i think um

02:28:10.720 | like you know i i i definitely realized that you know me i guess yeah well some of the examples

02:28:16.720 | were like you know me wishing for enzymes for christmas or you know a calculator or textbooks

02:28:21.760 | and things like that and you know it's like even i understand even at that age i realized that that

02:28:26.560 | is you know abnormal and like it's not like delivers things like like we it was also things

02:28:32.480 | like we brought up like you know this was like yeah this is something we could talk about it's

02:28:35.920 | kind of funny it's like and like you know you know i realized that like you know this is this

02:28:41.600 | is different i didn't i think it's more like you know it's not it was not laughing at me as you know

02:28:47.440 | it was more like oh it's different it's kind of interesting kind of thing you know it's not that's

02:28:51.360 | kind of what it was like oh it's kind of funny that it's interesting like you know this kid

02:28:55.200 | like wants enzyme like even like you know i know like i really want it but i realized you know

02:28:59.920 | people find that kind of odd and you know i i didn't have any i didn't take an issue with it

02:29:05.040 | that's great i mean now i feel kind of lame for taking issue with it because i definitely felt

02:29:09.680 | like it um i mean you know conan himself was like he's a very smart guy to he went to harbor and

02:29:15.280 | he's not like so he you know i i don't think i think you know it's just a joke for all of us

02:29:20.640 | i think it was not it was not you know they're not it's course that's great you know that they

02:29:25.120 | don't have any illville against me or anything like that so oh no i mean of course not i just

02:29:29.200 | yeah i was just joking about the fact that you're an intelligent person who has bold dreams i don't

02:29:36.000 | know like if some kid went on who had just won the under 1700 meters track and field when they

02:29:47.440 | were 11 i don't feel like that would they would be laughing about you know if they said like what do

02:29:53.920 | you want to be when you grow up and it'd be like a professional athlete like you know i don't know it

02:29:59.200 | just feels i don't know if they were necessarily laughing about that it either was more laughing

02:30:04.000 | about like yeah you know kind of funny then you know i want in terms of or like and then of course

02:30:10.560 | i was telling jokes too and that was kind of absolutely love your jokes that so um i don't

02:30:16.640 | know i i felt like like i thought the chemistry between me and kon and the other guest work was

02:30:22.320 | you know really good and i kind of felt like i was also in my element at the time so i don't know i

02:30:26.320 | felt like personally i thought it was that it was a you know a fairly good interview uh all together

02:30:31.600 | i mean i mean obviously it must have been given that nobody else has complained about this kid

02:30:37.520 | before and you didn't feel the same way so absolutely it's uh yeah that's why i prefaced

02:30:42.320 | this by saying i i might be totally i don't know i think you know i think it was like you know

02:30:48.800 | kon is i think known for his kind of self-deprecating humor and i think it was just kind of you know kind

02:30:53.360 | of along that sort of line of you know yeah oh i mean i love konan to be clear i i watched him

02:31:00.240 | nightly for years yeah i have no problem with the guy i think it's great and it was good that also

02:31:06.800 | like you know he we met him before before the interview and you know stuff like that's just

02:31:11.760 | to you know make me feel more comfortable yeah yeah i think even like if i did get to meet him

02:31:16.400 | and stuff you know maybe i could see myself maybe feeling a little bit maybe weird to help by there

02:31:21.680 | something like that i don't know and then i mean they really like me have it on the show and like

02:31:25.680 | i think later on they wanted me to do like one of their web exclusives or something like this with

02:31:30.960 | like like fester brian cox or something like this so that they have me up for another thing like

02:31:35.600 | that oh i never saw that that's interesting yeah it's like on it's on like the teen cocoa website

02:31:40.640 | so i don't think many people have seen it actually but like i did one so i came back later um

02:31:46.960 | uh yeah so i actually came back for another episode where brian cox was a guest and um after

02:31:52.880 | his interviews i got to watch the interview and you know kind of be part of their you know part

02:31:57.200 | of the backstage you know and then after afterwards when brian cox was done um uh then they yeah i got

02:32:05.920 | to interview him and you know just also had another bit good time that's awesome we love brian cox

02:32:11.440 | um yeah so that was another um event and like yeah so yeah i really yeah it was i really had a lot

02:32:19.360 | of fun actually but you know both of those current sessions i was like yeah that's like

02:32:23.120 | what one of the coolest things i feel like i've i've done so amazing yeah of course you know i've

02:32:28.400 | done a lot of cool things um you know i've had to you know i'm very grateful and lucky but i think

02:32:32.880 | this is also one of the cool things that i got to do well let's yeah i mean so tell me more what

02:32:37.920 | what are other like memorable moments in your life or like just things that you look back on and feel

02:32:44.480 | a lot of joy or pride or whatever yeah um or and certainly like even now is like i think now i kind

02:32:57.440 | of feel like maybe i'm in that stage where like wow this is like you know part of this sort of

02:33:02.080 | ai revolution and being kind of you know at the forefront of that you know at this company that

02:33:08.560 | is all obviously you know taking leading charge on that and you know working with lots of um

02:33:14.960 | respectable names in the field um and um yeah like like something like yeah what we're doing

02:33:24.560 | yeah i just feel like what we're doing right now um is yeah it's going to change the world right

02:33:31.200 | like or it is the same way yeah and so i i'm i'm i'm very proud of that and i want that to continue

02:33:38.480 | as much as possible um and so i'm just kind of like trying to enjoy the ride as well um so that

02:33:44.240 | certainly like that comes to mind like you know i for example the stability ai launch party i was

02:33:50.080 | i was in attendance for that and it's like you could see like you know these are like the biggest

02:33:55.440 | names in the field like in the in the tech industry overall not just in ai like you know i don't know

02:34:00.240 | if you heard like sir gay brin was there and i do like it's like you know the biggest need in the

02:34:06.320 | field and they're all there to to witness this and it's like i'm lucky to be part of that team

02:34:13.920 | um you know i that's kind of you know i i this may be going in the history books we never know

02:34:20.720 | i mean absolutely and not just part of the team but later in that team yeah that's why i'm really

02:34:27.040 | excited to to be um in that space and i think i'm i think those memories are being made right now

02:34:34.720 | yeah um let's see what else i mean it was cool that like you know you you invited to one of our

02:34:41.200 | regular chats the guy who basically built the technology that yeah that stable

02:34:51.040 | perfusion that the stability ai is based on and we got to hear from him directly how it came to pass

02:34:58.560 | and yeah it's like he yeah because he yeah i i know him now it through stability and it's kind of

02:35:09.600 | interesting to to interact with you know someone who's clearly the leader in the field and um

02:35:16.160 | and learn from them like that's the biggest thing is like i was trying to and this is what you really

02:35:21.440 | always wanted right like that you were talking about as a kid is wanting to do research with

02:35:26.640 | top researchers exactly yeah this is definitely i definitely the dream um and yeah so that's an

02:35:37.040 | awesome answer um what about yeah going back a bit other yeah memorable moments like i was going

02:35:45.600 | to say like the tanex talk was definitely a memorable woman i think yeah there's a lot of

02:35:50.800 | preparation that went to that actually you know it was like actually a few months of preparation

02:35:55.360 | so yeah it was actually quite uh i mean your delivery was excellent you know yeah definitely

02:36:01.680 | i practiced it several times you know they they gave some some help as well and um i think it

02:36:09.280 | they came out well um it did yeah uh let's see what else um i think it was like i think a lot of the

02:36:18.800 | you know somewhat some of the international trips were also very exciting too so like yeah i was

02:36:24.000 | reading about a trip you took to india to vjti where your mom was saying that one of your

02:36:31.920 | ancestors had been like director of his institute or something is that is that one of those memorable

02:36:37.200 | trips for you yeah the dean of the college or something like that yeah um so yeah i was

02:36:45.760 | invited to to speak at one of their um i think it was like some tech uh event you know like so it's

02:36:51.600 | like so what is vjti oh yeah vjti is like one of the again leading uh universities the tech

02:36:59.040 | universities um in india so you know india does have a lot of good uh it because focused

02:37:07.680 | universities in general so vjti is one of those universities um and so they have like the sort of

02:37:12.960 | i think it's like technobanza or some of these it's a fairly big event multi-day event um and

02:37:18.640 | you know they have uh you know they have lots of different things going on competitions talks all

02:37:27.840 | kinds of different you know tech related stuff um so they invited me to give like i think it was

02:37:32.480 | like kind of like one of their keynote talks or like one of their they have a non-talk series

02:37:35.920 | and you know there's a lot of esteemed um guests that have given talks uh in the past through this

02:37:42.720 | talk series and i mean it must have been pretty special for your mom too since her her uncle was

02:37:47.600 | the director of the place to be to be back yeah well so yeah he wasn't he's not anymore but he

02:37:54.640 | was in the past and i think my mom you know had had caught him to the university in the past

02:38:00.240 | and uh you know uh you know had made you know some visits in the past when when my yeah been

02:38:06.640 | when when he was there and so actually afterwards um after the talk we actually you know they have

02:38:12.640 | the the the living quarters for the for the dean over there and we actually made a visit and my

02:38:18.560 | mom was actually a little bit nostalgic about like yeah because she she actually come there

02:38:23.520 | before she yeah she went there before and it was hanging around she she had you know she had made

02:38:28.960 | a few visits so she she was actually a little bit nostalgic about that you know definitely yeah

02:38:33.200 | definitely proud of that you know um then you know uh you know several years later hit up you know

02:38:38.560 | i guess a couple decades later um you know um i i'm i'm there to to to speak but for me i think what

02:38:46.160 | was really great about that trip was so you know there's a lot of students and also there was a lot

02:38:51.360 | of like high school students as well so like a lot of high school students came and um and it's like

02:38:56.080 | i think they had some competitions and stuff like that and then they had me like give the awards to

02:39:00.800 | all the students actually wow and they also and even afterwards that a lot of the students came

02:39:07.600 | up to me and they were you know they wanted to take pictures of me and they were wanting to

02:39:11.280 | to get my heart over the abs and it was like it was like kind of like i think like that's like

02:39:19.440 | i'm very glad to know that i've inspired a lot of you know students around the world i think that

02:39:25.040 | definitely the huge impact not so like like that's another thing like about like i think we'd be

02:39:30.960 | talking about this earlier in terms of like what i'm doing as a researcher but in an also blind

02:39:35.120 | journey as a child prodigy and like balancing that out in terms of like who i am as you know

02:39:39.680 | is my identity right i think i think um you know inspiring all these students you know through my

02:39:46.800 | journey is something that i'm definitely very proud of um and so i definitely yeah i take a

02:39:52.240 | lot of pride in that and so that's why like i don't also want to i don't want to minimize that

02:39:56.560 | obviously yeah but so the balance you're talking about there is like at one level you know you were

02:40:05.520 | lorded recognized as a child genius child prodigy and that is something which can provide

02:40:14.320 | a role model direction inspiration for other kids but at another level

02:40:18.800 | you know now you're you're not a kid you're an adult and you i guess would want to be recognized

02:40:27.600 | for your current achievements rather than your that you know your interesting past is that is

02:40:36.000 | that the compromise you're referring to yeah exactly yeah um yeah yeah that's kind of what i'm

02:40:40.560 | talking about um yeah and so i said you know these sorts of events where like you know i get to talk

02:40:47.920 | to some of these people all these students um you know kind of face to face reminds me of you know

02:40:54.000 | that you know my my journey has added a huge impact on others uh you know there's so many

02:40:59.280 | moments like that like yeah i think a couple i think it was like last year or so or maybe

02:41:04.480 | yeah a couple years ago there was some news about you know uh there's a student who also

02:41:09.520 | was trying to accelerate in her academic um in india and the the the judge actually cited

02:41:19.920 | i think my tedx talk um you know and and use that as you know ed kind of a as evidence or like kind

02:41:26.960 | of as um you know typically just for in support of the student so you know even kind of i get

02:41:33.600 | that the you know even in the courts that they are using my case to help to help other students and

02:41:38.640 | that's obviously something that's well as are we i mean um in my family you know i've watched your

02:41:46.160 | tedx talk with my daughter it's like perfect timing for her because she's at the age that

02:41:52.000 | you're referring to in the talk even though you were two years older and we've also watched

02:41:57.520 | child genius australia together which is generally around about kids at more

02:42:01.920 | eight or nine but you know in the general ballpark and yeah i think she you know she liked

02:42:09.280 | seeing people that doing things that seemed exciting and um not totally out of reach and being

02:42:18.880 | as respected and appreciated for that absolutely i think it does um i think it's made a difference

02:42:27.200 | for our family yeah that's that's really good to hear yeah yeah so yeah it definitely means a lot

02:42:33.040 | to me when i when i hear that from from people so even you know even so it was good to to see that

02:42:38.480 | both in person um you know i was there at the gti and then also in the same trip we also went to

02:42:44.560 | like a high school um and you know i think yeah the they invited me in to to give a talk and also

02:42:52.160 | my sister did to sing there and and then a lot of people yeah um you know we're very happy and they

02:42:58.160 | they asked they asked us a bunch of questions they were very engaged and and um yeah it was it was

02:43:03.760 | good to to to see that you know it certainly um i guess lighted up their day and and um and inspired

02:43:13.440 | them and and then i still get messages occasionally on on you know on twitter facebook whatever and

02:43:18.400 | you know that's also you know always great to see and also i mean i i imagine your trip to nasa must

02:43:26.400 | have some special memories yeah is that chronologically yeah i'm not quite sure how that

02:43:34.000 | where that is my trip to nasa i must have been like nine years old or so so yeah it says here

02:43:40.800 | you're in nine july 2012 yeah so like that was also like a very interesting trip because

02:43:47.840 | i was like starting trip maybe download a little bit of research so that's kind of gonna like

02:43:52.800 | started first dabbling in a bit of research and so that was like me talking about um i think it was

02:43:58.560 | like something but like citizen size tools and how it could be used or something something like it

02:44:03.200 | was like oh nice uh moving topography and stuff like that and there's like a different in the

02:44:08.880 | different citizen science tools and i was like comparing them and talking about that so so yeah

02:44:12.880 | i was doing something like that because yeah at that time of course citizen science tools were

02:44:16.400 | kind of like one of the few ways i could you know get involved so i was like really excited to play

02:44:20.720 | around with such tools and you know how did you get that how did you get that opportunity because

02:44:26.560 | at least according to what i'm reading it says you're the youngest person to speak at a nasa

02:44:33.280 | conference i mean i've been to a few you know nasa events in the past that i think we were able to

02:44:40.160 | reach out to some of the the folks there and they were very willing to to support me and support my

02:44:46.480 | interest so luckily through that you know through some of the folks there so this is uh by the way

02:44:50.960 | this is a at nasa aim so this isn't oh cool yeah i taught there for a while yeah oh yeah um was that

02:44:58.080 | through like singularity yeah yeah through rescue yeah it's a it's a fascinating campus with that

02:45:04.240 | giant uh airship um thing in the middle yeah i remember like the back then so like i know there

02:45:12.400 | was like like i think they were like you know dismantling it i think there's like asbestos

02:45:18.320 | problems or something yeah that's exactly right they they dismantled it and actually um they let

02:45:25.680 | if i remember correctly sergei and larry used the airstrip there kind of in exchange for them

02:45:32.800 | helping to fund that oh yeah you know so yeah i was lucky to be there before it was torn down

02:45:40.480 | well as i was going like you know i think maybe you know some of the first events were like maybe

02:45:46.080 | in 2010 2011 and then i started going for you know it for a few years like i was like watching

02:45:51.520 | you know seeing it getting dismantled over you know months and months and you just see it like

02:45:56.400 | slowly getting dismantled so it was kind of interesting to kind of see that um but yeah

02:46:01.120 | so i made a few contacts at nasa aims that way um yeah and you know cool i know the i guess the

02:46:06.800 | lure science institute or whatever that they had there and they were kind of saying for me it was

02:46:11.680 | quite an inspiring place to be around like there's always interesting things happening and um

02:46:18.080 | yeah like you know they have this they had this amazing visualization kind of wall they had uh

02:46:24.640 | quantum computing happening there and of course the place is kind of dotted with

02:46:30.080 | relics of the space here around the place yeah would have i mean as a like i mean for me as an

02:46:36.160 | adult it was bloody exciting but i guess for a nine-year-old it must have been even more amazing

02:46:40.160 | it was definitely very exciting um and yeah i think that was probably maybe that may have been

02:46:46.240 | like my first conference now that i think about it i think that may have been like my first

02:46:52.080 | scientific conference that i attended uh maybe it was still like mostly like you know high school

02:46:56.160 | student stuff but they like presenting research and stuff so it was still kind of like a you know

02:46:59.760 | it was like a symposium so yeah like a you know research related and so i was you know i think

02:47:05.040 | that was like a really great event for me to kind of like soak that all in uh and and also at that

02:47:11.920 | at that age my understanding talking of astronomy you you started a or co-founded a astronomy club

02:47:20.640 | yeah yeah college yeah so i think i guess like yeah i was taking a astronomy class there

02:47:27.520 | and then you know there's a lot of big club opportunities you know at community colleges

02:47:33.440 | and so um yeah i think maybe we talked about like you know clubs and stuff like that um so like even

02:47:40.240 | even in community colleges there are a lot of great clubs in terms of like yeah geology biology

02:47:45.360 | all these different clubs yeah um and so even then i was like wanting to get involved in those sorts

02:47:50.240 | of opportunities but it turned out for like the astronomy department they didn't actually have any

02:47:54.800 | sort of student-run club or anything like that um so you know i just you know brought that up to my

02:48:01.280 | professor and said like this is something maybe we could could have over here um and um yeah he was

02:48:09.040 | he was also on board and you know interested in you know helping out because you have to have like

02:48:14.400 | one faculty member kind of sign off with on your on your application or whatever and then we kind

02:48:19.440 | of were starting to recruit folks and so we had some folks who were interested and we formed a

02:48:24.400 | small little club um and then um it kind of grew into also a physics club i think they didn't also

02:48:30.480 | have a physics club at the time so we need like a physics and astronomy club um but so i was like

02:48:37.360 | the founding vice president so i was the vice president for like two maybe two years i think

02:48:42.640 | two or three years something like that and uh we kind of started a couple projects um i wasn't

02:48:48.880 | unfortunately able to see those projects through but they would manage to finish some of those

02:48:53.520 | projects like there were some projects you know sending up you know these high-altitude balloons

02:48:58.000 | and doing different experiments and um you know that was all fun i don't know if they like yeah i

02:49:03.120 | know that they went went ahead and finally did some high-altitude balloon experiments

02:49:07.440 | and the time i was very interested in astrobiology and you know the you know kind of this sort of

02:49:14.000 | uh space biology and things like that so i was coming up with like experiments around that focus

02:49:18.800 | um i don't know if they actually pursued that but yeah that was another opportunity where i started

02:49:24.800 | getting a little bit more involved in reading papers that kind of thing um so that was a really

02:49:32.000 | useful opportunity for me and i was yeah really happy to be able to do that and you know so it

02:49:37.920 | sounds like a lot of your it sounds like a lot of your highlights are absolutely related quite

02:49:44.560 | strongly to your to your studies and your research at least in that period of your life yeah i guess

02:49:51.840 | so um so it's not surprising because it's been yeah i mean not many adults would have had those

02:49:58.320 | opportunities that maybe a little bit different one um yeah i'm afraid i think there's anything

02:50:05.040 | that's fine i'm not trying to push you in a different direction i actually wanted to

02:50:09.520 | switch that on its head a little bit if that's okay because like yeah i mean i'm just thrilled

02:50:17.360 | to hear that you've had so many amazing opportunities and experiences and they've

02:50:22.960 | brought you joy and excitement but uh you know i was wondering if you don't mind also sharing

02:50:29.280 | like what have been some of the toughest moments in your recently short career and life so far

02:50:39.040 | and how have you dealt with those yeah i mean i kind of maybe i've touched on it on a few already

02:50:45.200 | in terms of just like a lot of it is dealing with naysayers and folks are what was that time being

02:50:56.560 | bullied in grade three would that be like up there or is that kind of gotten far enough in

02:51:02.640 | the past now or during the time in community college also um so i was in basically up until

02:51:09.760 | i graduated high school i didn't even know even after that you know um you know for graduate high

02:51:17.120 | school um like i was taking community college classes and say for example chemistry and the

02:51:22.320 | professor was like oh i'm not sure if you're you know going to be able to carry through the labs

02:51:27.360 | and things like that um um what did they mean by that well i guess it's just more like being able

02:51:35.440 | to deal with i guess hazardous substances and stuff like that they were already that's not

02:51:40.800 | going to be possible with the you know i was at that time 10 years old so and tanish just to

02:51:45.920 | clarify did does this feel like a tough memory because that kind of prejudice made you feel

02:51:58.960 | angry or sad or is it just the way in which it was stopping you from doing the things you wanted

02:52:04.320 | to do or a bit of both i think it was a bit of both i think it was like a lot of it was definitely

02:52:09.520 | i think you know it was very frustrating that's what it was it was um you know frustrating and

02:52:14.880 | um you know it's just like yeah there's a lot that you have to deal with like it just felt

02:52:22.160 | like you know i'm there to i'm there to learn and then it's like you have to do with all this how

02:52:26.720 | they're sort of like baggage in a way well exactly that's how i was like i was actually talking to my

02:52:32.160 | wife rachel today before i chatted to you and it's like i was kind of telling her what i wanted to

02:52:37.600 | talk about and i kind of said the way i see that period of life it felt like you were saying

02:52:44.000 | i want to be allowed to learn and that there was some group of people who were

02:52:49.600 | saying you should not have that right and that just seems so wrong to me right right i feel angry on

02:52:57.760 | your back yeah yeah you and yeah i mean that you can you can imagine how my parents felt right

02:53:05.760 | they were especially uh uh angry and frustrated with the you know the administration with the

02:53:12.240 | professors all kinds of yeah so it was it was so yeah i think that's a lot of where my frustration

02:53:18.560 | came and then then of course i certainly um you know as as i um i mean even in like university i

02:53:26.880 | think certainly um you do have i definitely had you know frustration dealing with you know certain

02:53:32.640 | students and things like that and like i said you know what kind of things happened oh just like

02:53:38.960 | again um you know certain like you mean more like teasing or it's more like again like i said

02:53:47.840 | working you know like they expect you to you know work overnight with them on things like like so

02:53:54.880 | like there was a lot of like for example tension with maybe like we had a senior design project

02:53:59.360 | and you know there's there's a lot of work that goes into that and even though like so like i was

02:54:04.400 | effectively kind of leading you know leading the team like i had in fact um conceptualized the

02:54:11.200 | idea that we would work on and you know we decided that's what i'm going to work on and you know

02:54:16.000 | all of that but even then there's still like a lot of tension between within the within the group

02:54:20.720 | because you know there's certain things i couldn't do like you know work at someone's uh you know

02:54:25.680 | stay at someone's apartment overnight to to work on you know the airport or you know yeah whatever

02:54:32.240 | and so i mean honestly that feels pretty callous to me i mean they know that you're a kid like it

02:54:38.320 | seems like i'm slightly shocked that people were um was it like maybe they just felt like you

02:54:45.360 | shouldn't be there at all and that this is their way of i think i think it was like i think it was

02:54:52.560 | like certainly like this i think the expectation was you should be like a normal polish did it

02:54:57.920 | right like that's kind of the expectation so i think they may be more willing to work you know

02:55:05.200 | there's some issues working outside of the box you know outside of those regular expectations um

02:55:12.400 | so you know there was a you know there's a lot of tension definitely within the group but uh

02:55:17.360 | you know eventually i mean managed to to resolve that you know in a in a i guess in an amicable

02:55:23.920 | manner finally at the end but it was definitely how did you do that i think i mean at a certain

02:55:29.360 | point i think there was also some involvement of um you know the the professors um and and you know

02:55:38.400 | i guess there was i don't remember if like i'd i don't really find necessarily doing anything but

02:55:43.280 | i was traveling i think certainly i think they eventually did become more understanding and

02:55:48.560 | accommodating after some time i think maybe when they realized they couldn't really push me to you

02:55:55.120 | know do do these sorts of things no i mean yeah exactly like that the outcome that's not going to

02:56:00.560 | happen is the 13 year old that came like like a 19 year old because yeah i went to 19 year old

02:56:09.120 | yeah so there were certain things like that and then and then i mean of course there's like a

02:56:14.960 | i think there was going to be a similar situation with a lot of the the research that i would like

02:56:20.720 | undergraduate research um expectations to to to be in the lab for you know some a significant

02:56:27.440 | amount of time but i think that was more it's certainly a struggle with kind of balance more

02:56:32.160 | with balancing that with the classwork and things like that yeah i mean it sounds like quite often

02:56:37.760 | you were almost expected or required to you were held to a higher standard than the other

02:56:45.600 | folks like you described earlier with like how to get a's in your you know yeah in college

02:56:52.720 | certainly there was higher standards but then certainly there were also like maybe

02:56:56.240 | standards that you would expect of a normal student but you know my situation is different

02:57:04.880 | and maybe those are not the same status that apply i think there's also that aspect of things

02:57:09.600 | so it's not necessarily fire you know just generally but maybe maybe higher and for my

02:57:15.600 | particular situation um again that's the same point in terms of like getting fellowships and

02:57:21.040 | stuff like that you know my situation was completely different well you know maybe it's not

02:57:27.360 | as comparable to the situation of regular students but that is what all the you know application

02:57:33.040 | committees considered and you know for that reason i didn't get any any uh fellowships apart from one

02:57:39.520 | internal fellowship from uc davis but i went into grad school um and similarly and also with

02:57:45.440 | scholarships it was very hard for me to get scholarships and i so in term and i think yeah

02:57:50.880 | like certainly there's i think that that was also yeah basically there is that period basically

02:57:58.240 | with between sort of like yeah as i was finishing up undergrad kind of coming you know dealing with

02:58:03.520 | all the senior design kind of tension and going into grad school maybe um trying to figure out

02:58:08.960 | what is the next step and then trying to find a lab um because you know there was you know i had

02:58:14.880 | planned to join this particular lab and yeah again there was another issue again things like um

02:58:19.600 | rotations lab rotations and stuff again there just was again expectations um and i guess i

02:58:28.240 | wasn't able to to meet those expectations it was hard working that out there was again some tension

02:58:33.520 | in that scenario i remember one rotation didn't work out because of some tension with one of

02:58:38.800 | the the project scientists at postdocs or something like that so there was like you know at that time

02:58:43.840 | there was a lot of like attention and definitely some concern about like what lab am i going to

02:58:47.760 | join and so actually in reality i joined a lot quite late actually compared to you know most

02:58:54.480 | phd students um because so what was that so the tension you referred to like what

02:58:58.880 | what did that look like what was what was happening it was more like um i don't know it was like

02:59:06.400 | just trying to the the tension was more uh again lots of these are hands-on labs um there there's

02:59:16.160 | expectation to be there you know from 9 a.m to 9 p.m or whatever um and so i guess in you

02:59:24.480 | know at the time that that wasn't something then you know again i'm like only 14 or something

02:59:29.440 | yeah and then also there's this there's also you know classwork and other things um but certainly

02:59:36.400 | yeah and then it i guess certainly there may have been also some prejudice in terms of age

02:59:44.000 | as well you know i don't like it's not it's not a word prejudice and not going to like show it

02:59:51.280 | very clearly but i felt like that probably is still yeah that that under but i mean and that's

02:59:57.680 | part of the tough thing about prejudice and being different is it's almost it's very very rare you

03:00:06.080 | can actually definitively point at something and say this was due to prejudice but at the same time

03:00:11.680 | there's always going to be a big part of you wondering which i think yeah this is what like

03:00:18.080 | my mom is always like oh they might be like my mom always thinks like folks are predators about

03:00:23.520 | like certain things but like like if you think about like yes my mom is probably right but like

03:00:27.520 | you don't want to like believe like how can everyone be like that but like you know it turns

03:00:32.720 | out like guys people do tend to sometimes feel first and i think the scene is like true now for

03:00:38.160 | my old for my sister you know she's in this sort of very competitive field oh wow and music music

03:00:44.320 | and in singing where you know there's a limited response and like you know trying to positions

03:00:48.560 | and you know she's very young and it's like uh you know she's trying to get positions and it's

03:00:52.960 | it's very difficult and there's definitely a lot of that bias and prejudice happening there as well

03:00:56.960 | and um so you know my mom is always like calling that out and you know it's like you know it's

03:01:04.720 | probably true um there's probably a lot of that happening um then you just but you just kind of

03:01:10.320 | don't want to believe like how can people actually be like that but it's just you know people all

03:01:14.880 | like that so yes they are yeah yeah um okay so let's talk about the the phd um i mean let's

03:01:25.760 | yeah let's keep kind of going chronologically so yeah it was hard to find a lab and yeah but what

03:01:33.840 | happened how did you yeah find something and what did you find so like again like the plan was like

03:01:39.360 | okay i was doing some lab rotations but then i was like the backup was still the synthetic

03:01:44.000 | biology lab but then eventually i was like oh but then i'm like okay i did some i did a couple

03:01:48.800 | lab rotations and as i said a couple dropped out as well and then um this this then i was like going

03:01:54.720 | back to this synthetic biology lab then he was like actually didn't really want to have you on board

03:01:58.880 | or um you know he wasn't interested in having me in the lab anymore um and this is after me like

03:02:05.440 | i mean i was in the lab the same lab for the entirety of like my undergrad right so i was

03:02:12.000 | in there for two years then even the summer after i graduated it was like if you're going to be in

03:02:18.000 | my lab i want you to spend a few more months doing some hands-on work so i spent like my uh you know

03:02:23.760 | like two or three months in the summer also working in his lab even after that and he was like

03:02:29.040 | he didn't feel my research output was that great or you know it was not it was not as and he didn't

03:02:35.040 | feel like his the environment that he was providing was going to be the best environment for me which

03:02:40.240 | i don't know if that was true yeah it sounds like maybe they had um kind of made that decision

03:02:45.760 | already and it was possible i think i think you know yeah that may be possible um but you know

03:02:54.640 | maybe that it is it may have also been possible like if they were in that lab it probably it might

03:02:59.280 | not have been the best environment for me anyway so well i was going to ask i mean it it seems like

03:03:05.280 | computational biology is a seems like a fairly natural fit you know which is kind of like

03:03:12.240 | what you're doing now right you know it's like neural nets and whatnot and not not a whole lot of

03:03:17.520 | you know preparing hazardous materials he wanted me to do was like like so my undergrad research

03:03:23.760 | was mostly a lot of computation biology but his lab is technically a synthetic biology lab so um

03:03:29.520 | and then i think he wanted me to do some yeah yeah i mean i also was like yeah i don't know if

03:03:34.080 | i could use computational biology for the entire PhD so he wanted me to you know i see first play

03:03:39.360 | around and do things like that um in the lab and so it was it still it was still a mostly synthetic

03:03:46.240 | biology lab where you have to do lots of hands-on work and you know the students are there from

03:03:50.480 | again nine nine a half to nine pm and you know they're working long hours trying to get their

03:03:55.200 | experiments to to work um so yeah so i don't know in reality maybe you know it was it might not have

03:04:03.440 | been the best um yeah so what happened so where did you have to where'd you go and how did that

03:04:09.280 | happen yeah so then i was like then then that lab said no i was kind of like really like what am i

03:04:14.880 | gonna do um i was like that was my backup and i absolutely didn't work um and then um then i was

03:04:21.280 | like what about doing some machine learning because at this point you know i started you

03:04:25.520 | know taking the fast a course so this is i mean this was in um well like early 2019 so like yeah

03:04:31.600 | so i guess most people watching will know this but so the first day our course is my deep learning

03:04:36.320 | course yes and so you are an alum of that course which isn't entirely online and so how old were

03:04:43.840 | you when you started that course and and and and why why did you start that course so i must have

03:04:50.640 | been 14 when i started the course um i was i think i was just very interested in machine learning

03:04:56.560 | because it was just a hot topic at the time and i think um so like i attempted to learn yeah i

03:05:01.600 | guess it's kind of going now into my machine learning path um but i so i first so like i

03:05:06.320 | think i may have seen like things like kaggle and stuff like that i was like oh it was kind of really

03:05:10.400 | cool so this has been in 2016 um so i like this is it so it was like you know well i checked out

03:05:16.880 | kaggle i took oh so sorry i'm just gonna keep filling in things again i guess most people are

03:05:21.600 | going to know these things but um so kaggle is the main uh kind of international competition

03:05:27.760 | platform for machine learning practitioners where i used to you know i was the president and chief

03:05:33.120 | scientist when it was started so yeah sorry to try to keep interrupting you no worries yeah yeah

03:05:38.720 | um and the funny thing is like you know when you start with kaggle it's like oh like you know i

03:05:43.280 | think there's probably like you know i mean when you first see it you're like oh there's these are

03:05:46.960 | competitions and you can get we can win money and it's like oh wow it's so cool but then like you

03:05:51.200 | basically like and it's not about the money it's just about the experience and learning so yeah i

03:05:55.360 | think it's pretty cool like oh wow okay but then like you go into it it's like okay it's you know

03:06:01.520 | it's more about the experience that it's very hard to you know and part of it and the community

03:06:05.920 | perhaps i mean there's a lot of you know people helping each other and stuff yeah and there's a

03:06:11.920 | lot you can learn from from from kaggle and so so this is in 2016 actually so this is even before

03:06:18.240 | i went into my bachelors right before i went to uc davis right so i checked out kaggle i then

03:06:25.200 | decided i'm going to learn some machine learning so i actually took anorene's course sarah course

03:06:29.760 | they're green so i took that um so that's like one of the again one of the leading

03:06:34.800 | machine learning courses i think grand sarah was originally founded to to right that course yeah

03:06:41.360 | with uh daphne color yeah yeah it's a really good course um and yes but like i think that's again

03:06:49.120 | still more like um from the basis kind of it's a bit more of an academic approach yeah it's more

03:06:55.920 | pregnant like uh yeah like a typical approach and i feel like it didn't really help my you know

03:07:01.760 | more of the practical side of things right so you know i still like playing around with kaggle but

03:07:06.800 | like i feel i'm like not like i felt like i was my skills were not progressing anywhere i'm not like

03:07:12.000 | improving in terms of you know copy you know how i'm doing competition is nothing like that

03:07:16.240 | i feel like i'm not going about this the right way so i in fact took a break from kaggle and

03:07:20.720 | you know exploring that um for a bit then i think i just at one point i decided to visit it again

03:07:27.440 | in like 20 late 2018 and i was seeing some nice kaggle notebooks so just to i guess it fell in

03:07:33.200 | again a lot of the lot of the um on the kaggle platform and especially with a lot of the

03:07:37.840 | complications people will post um you know example code and you can run that code and play around

03:07:43.600 | with it right and you know like it's like in a jupiter a lot a lot of times jupiter notebook so

03:07:48.160 | it's got you know a lot of explanations and things like that as well so it's it's a very good to also

03:07:52.880 | just go over a lot of these notebooks if you know just for learning purposes um so i think i'm just

03:07:57.760 | kind of interested in what's out there and i and i've known you have ended up becoming one of the

03:08:03.360 | only notebook grandmasters in the world on that oh yeah that's curious basically i i really like

03:08:08.960 | creating notebooks and again me too i am also one of those notebook grandmasters i'm a notebook

03:08:15.200 | grandmaster and um a lot of it was using the fasta library and it's funny because that's where i first

03:08:20.960 | discovered like the fasta library was oh okay notebooks and i think it may have been like by

03:08:26.720 | i think iphos it's one of those one of those again he's again like notebook grandmaster and he was i

03:08:31.920 | think he wanted the notebooks he was using fastai and then the notebook did very well in in the

03:08:37.520 | competition as well and i was like okay this is very interesting and it looks very simple but it's

03:08:42.000 | like doing very well and i should check out this fastai stuff more and i actually remembered that

03:08:47.520 | i once saw fastai on twitter or something like this and they had this course and like i was like

03:08:52.160 | thinking about looking into that course a bit and i think they may have watched like the first lecture

03:08:56.320 | or at least maybe the first 30 minutes of the first lecture or something like that and i decided maybe

03:09:00.320 | i should dig into it more so i found so this was in by late 2018 i'm just giving like a whole

03:09:06.080 | timeline of everything it's yeah it's like it's great i love it um and um then i i took um i was

03:09:13.680 | so i was i went to the lectures but i think that i went to like the first two lectures but then

03:09:19.920 | right after that i think you released a new course i think or something like that so then it's like

03:09:23.840 | okay um so i think yeah i think you like released a new course a new part one version of the course

03:09:29.120 | or whatever so then i was like i'm just going to go through that so then i went through the entire

03:09:32.320 | course and um at the same time so you did part two as well part one and part two yeah so i did part one

03:09:39.920 | was released um you had you had it released right to the whole public then i went through part one

03:09:47.280 | i was participating in the forums you know asking my own question answering other people's questions

03:09:53.040 | then as i was also going through part one i looked at some cattle competitions um there was one like

03:09:59.760 | i think it all like uh one of the audio classification competitions man i kind of like

03:10:04.800 | participated with that and um you know i was like i was so actually you know at the end of the

03:10:10.160 | competition i was actually very close to brown's metal i think i may have missed like by like five

03:10:14.560 | spots or something like that but like so like it's kind of disappointing but also like i feel like i

03:10:19.040 | was doing so much better than i was before and i think like a lot of what i learned from fasta

03:10:23.120 | i really kind of you know provide lots of useful skills and then on top of that i was also playing

03:10:28.480 | around with um you know i decided well i'm interested of course in biomedical engineering

03:10:33.520 | medicine general so i decided to take a medical AI dataset so i looked at uh diabetic retinopathy

03:10:40.160 | which is like in a rarity oftentimes they're you know imaging the the eye um the whole um set up

03:10:47.280 | um it was actually yeah so this is this is diagnosing diabetes through eye images which is

03:10:53.600 | very much a thing and something that it turns out mainly thanks to that competition we've discovered

03:10:59.200 | that computers are extremely good at yeah exactly so this was yeah there's a older competition and

03:11:04.640 | so i just took the data from that and was just playing around with you know models on that and

03:11:08.480 | stuff all and it kind of did in a systematic approach for you know the stuff that i'm learning

03:11:12.400 | the fasta class i'll apply it and so that's kind of how i went through the course and did you then

03:11:17.600 | do the part two as well i did the part two line so i think i was invited through your kind of i

03:11:23.280 | guess your fellowship program whatever okay you should listen to the forums and so i did part two

03:11:28.320 | actually alive you know with the live streams so for those who aren't familiar like the part one

03:11:34.320 | course of fasta is kind of the introductory beginner level i mean it does take people up to

03:11:42.000 | kind of world-class best practices but of specific fairly well-developed and understood applications

03:11:48.480 | whereas part two is cutting edge research level reading papers implementing papers trying out

03:11:57.520 | new things that haven't existed before so it's a you know um lots of teenagers do part one i think

03:12:04.000 | not many teenagers do part two yeah so yeah that was a really fun experience um and the other thing

03:12:12.640 | was like i feel like i also learned a lot of like you know just general software engineering and

03:12:17.520 | both of these courses which is also really really useful and really helpful um but then so that was

03:12:24.960 | part two which ended i think maybe somewhere in the main or something like that um so that was

03:12:30.720 | around the time when also you know i was like in this kind of struggle to find a lab and so

03:12:37.280 | you know i i really enjoyed both and was that the one i'm trying to remember was that the one where

03:12:42.160 | we did all the super resolution stuff with jason and tick or was that the year afterwards um i think

03:12:50.320 | it may have been or no i'm just asking because i know i know you've you know ended up in image

03:12:55.120 | reconstruction from microscopy i think it might be the year before it might have been the year before

03:13:00.640 | down we are was i think the year let's see i think it wouldn't have been it would have been that oh

03:13:07.280 | wait no no no sorry that was actually part one 2019 was when we did it yeah yeah so i think this

03:13:12.720 | is the year that we had the swift stuffing think no after 2019 no that was 2019 as well i think uh

03:13:20.320 | it was oh gosh it's all clarity after 2019 did you do another part two i don't think so right

03:13:29.280 | you did 2020 2020 didn't have a part two and then 2021 kind of 2021 didn't even have a part one

03:13:37.440 | yeah so that it was 2019 then that was the one with the swift and so i don't think it covered um

03:13:44.160 | super resolution stuff no no no well uh actually the super resolution stuff actually was in part

03:13:48.720 | one of the course believe it or not it was lesson seven oh okay oh okay that may be right okay yeah

03:13:54.560 | i'm just looking at course 18.fast.ai to remind myself part two here we go oh okay so a lot of

03:14:03.520 | stuff that would be relevant to you we did cyclegans that's been cyclegans came out

03:14:07.760 | direct transfer our way did so first lot of super resolution actually was the end lesson 14 of 2018

03:14:15.120 | so so people who are not familiar with the field this will all be total mumbo jumbo but basically

03:14:20.320 | it's little very strongly related to the i mean cyclegans in particular is like literally what

03:14:25.680 | you research now right yeah out of it but i actually took course 2019 so that was okay but

03:14:33.520 | i definitely didn't look at a lot of those lectures still um you know because that because i definitely

03:14:38.000 | knew about the super resolution stuff i think yes okay so 2019 lesson seven was when we did the

03:14:45.200 | really full-on super resolution okay so then maybe that's what i saw then that may be what i saw um

03:14:50.560 | we did gans we did yeah um so so yeah at that point i was like okay um you know i'm really

03:15:00.720 | liking the deep learning stuff i even like a lot of my twitter feed became about deep learning and

03:15:05.440 | it's following a lot of these books and the deep learning field and that that that sphere and so

03:15:10.240 | so do you want to quickly describe what deep learning is and what it does okay

03:15:15.760 | again i guess most people will know but just uh you know make sure nobody's left behind

03:15:21.440 | you want me to explain or you want to yeah i want you to explain oh okay i don't know i can say

03:15:27.440 | things as well but uh i guess that's a good job i mean of course you know you're all about ai um and

03:15:34.880 | then this is kind of a sub subset of of artificial intelligence ai where you know you apply these

03:15:42.080 | neural networks as they call them but they're really just very um so very flexible functions

03:15:48.480 | i guess that um you're able to quote unquote train by you know passing in data so it's just

03:15:55.120 | a kind of a different framework altogether and in terms of programming usually you write down some

03:16:01.760 | rules and algorithms and then you write on data and you get your results but in this case you

03:16:07.360 | take data and you pass it into your neural networks and you run these sorts of training

03:16:13.040 | processes uh and then you get this sort of neural network at the end that is just learned how to do

03:16:18.480 | things yeah and learns how to do things that you can't write the code for the way i describe to

03:16:23.840 | people is it's basically deep learning is like the thing that's responsible for pretty much every

03:16:30.000 | amazing breakthrough in ai in the last few years yeah you know the fact that your phone you can

03:16:36.160 | speak to it that is thanks to deep learning the fact that you can search your you know your photos

03:16:43.200 | for pictures of cats even though you didn't say which ones have cats in that's thanks to deep

03:16:46.800 | learning yeah yeah all those superpowers yeah okay so you yeah so you started doing this before

03:16:56.320 | before even settling on a phd before yeah before like you know yeah i started i was dabbling in

03:17:03.360 | machine learning for a while but then when i took the fast ci course that's when i became really

03:17:07.520 | focused on this and i decided okay if i'm not joining this synthetic biology lab then maybe

03:17:12.880 | i can join a something more machine learning focused so again i found another lab i did a

03:17:18.480 | rotation in that lab unfortunately also that didn't work out so then this has by this is

03:17:23.760 | actually um you know this is a yeah this is a machine learning lab but again i guess it was just

03:17:28.720 | not um a good fit i think it was more of a like a more like like it was still kind of maybe more

03:17:33.680 | likely biology and things like that but that was more i think i was still more interested in more

03:17:38.960 | like medical aspects of of stuff there's like more applied i think maybe that's also kind of

03:17:44.640 | there was you know maybe the the fit in terms of the research ideas and projects that i was

03:17:50.240 | interested in maybe it wasn't really there so then at this point this is like end of summer of 2019

03:17:59.680 | and most people you don't get there they joined a lab like you know if you know if they if they

03:18:06.720 | people in my batch they would have joined a lab in like march and i'm like right behind here

03:18:11.680 | um so i even had special meetings so were you feeling a bit worried at this point

03:18:16.400 | i am very worried that yeah i'm extremely worried my parents are worried what are we going to do

03:18:21.280 | like um and so like i even met with the chair of the grad group a couple times

03:18:26.800 | and then the chair at uc davis yes at uc davis um and then you know he he mentioned a couple of

03:18:35.680 | uh labs another couple of lecture about the labs that do are doing more medical research

03:18:42.080 | with machine learning um and then um then he was like and then he was like this this there's this

03:18:47.600 | one lab that's also going to be joining it at the grad so it hasn't actually joined the grad

03:18:52.960 | yet but it's going to join the grad this coming up year uh and there was also he was like okay

03:18:58.640 | maybe there's also the other labs on campus which if you're not part of the grad group and they may

03:19:02.800 | be able to join the grad group if that's something you're interested in um because we were like maybe

03:19:07.280 | there's not there's not many good labs even in within the grad groups there are other labs

03:19:10.800 | that university that i could join but they could maybe join the grad group so we kind of figured

03:19:14.560 | out all kinds of situations but still mostly focused on doing ai research because i figured

03:19:20.720 | yeah that was what i wanted to so and then there was like a couple labs that i you know i met with

03:19:25.440 | the the the professors and then i finally got to meet my current professor and like he was

03:19:32.480 | joining the research and i thought it was quite interesting and i felt like again it's like a

03:19:37.200 | medical research that was more directly applicable right this is like microscopy and pathology and

03:19:42.720 | it's like actually talking you know working with how specimens in the clinic are being handled and

03:19:49.280 | examined and it's like if if i can do good research in this this is something that would have

03:19:54.000 | you know a positive impact more directly at least that's how i felt at the time and i mean

03:19:58.560 | i still feel that way but i'm saying that's yeah that's you know how you know how it how it looks

03:20:02.320 | like it when i was looking at this research and you know almost immediately i was like yeah this

03:20:06.240 | is a good lab i i really i this seems like there's lots of great um deforming opportunities and i

03:20:12.640 | immediately kind of said i'm going to join this lab um i didn't even do a rotation or anything

03:20:19.040 | and i was like yeah i'm going to join this lab and he was like yeah so what's what what's the

03:20:23.840 | name of the lab and who's who are we talking about that's running it yes this is a doctor

03:20:28.400 | richard levenson uh which uh yeah he's a um a professor of pathology so he actually has a

03:20:35.120 | background in pathology um so he he did his md um a while back like i think in the 70s so this is

03:20:43.680 | like a long time and then after that he you know went and just to clarify again for people not sure

03:20:49.360 | so pathology my late person's explanation is like kind of like looking at things like biopsies and

03:20:56.400 | whatnot you know under under a slide you know maybe staining it a bit and and looking at the

03:21:01.440 | cells and so forth trying to you know do a diagnosis and so forth is that roughly like

03:21:09.280 | if you need to yeah oftentimes too especially things like where you know the cellular information

03:21:15.040 | like the actual cells in in the body you know matter if you need to take those sorts of samples

03:21:19.760 | and then you know analyze it under a microscope yeah and pathology covers other things as well

03:21:24.960 | of course like blood tests and whatnot but i think your work is mainly around the medical

03:21:28.720 | imaging side of pathology histopathology especially like for example a lot of it like cancer

03:21:34.720 | but i mean we do of course there's still other um areas but a very common application is looking at

03:21:41.120 | you know different cancers and you know you know getting biopsies of different cancers and

03:21:45.520 | examining them under the microscope and providing a diagnosis that's a very common application but

03:21:50.080 | there's still and so this is like okay so like i um i had already come across you

03:21:57.280 | through our forums so fastai has a very bustling forum community of deep learning nerds like me

03:22:06.880 | and tenish um and i i'd never spoken to you directly but i you know interacted with you

03:22:16.880 | on various threads and yeah didn't i had no idea why because like for a long time i had no idea

03:22:22.480 | who you were i think they had a sense that you were like surprisingly young maybe or even i'm

03:22:29.120 | not even sure i knew that i mean i get my profile like for a long time actually pretty

03:22:34.080 | and like an anonymous profile so like i didn't actually put any information about myself on most

03:22:39.040 | of the uh machine learning like even on caggle with stuff like that i actually kept myself

03:22:44.560 | pretty anonymous for a while because you know something that's interesting also just interacting

03:22:48.320 | with people online i think you know is that basically so there would be no kind of expectations

03:22:54.000 | or prejudice or anything but just interact with you for your work and nothing else or was it more

03:22:59.040 | accidental like um i mean i think it was like especially my you know i think it's something

03:23:04.160 | you hear from you like if my i heard you know you hear from my parents from like you know just

03:23:08.720 | be careful who you're interacting with online and like you know yeah don't put a lot of you don't

03:23:14.000 | want to put too much information so like at the most most of my sort of like public communication

03:23:21.040 | for you know my identity was there it was mostly through twitter and facebook and they kind of

03:23:25.840 | mostly everywhere else i was pretty much anonymous just it was more kind of like yeah for safety uh

03:23:32.320 | you know for that purpose but i um but i didn't know your supervisor richard because um i had

03:23:39.280 | started a medical AI company a few years earlier and um medical imaging became our focus and

03:23:48.720 | histopathology was something we were interested in looking into and respect to richard because

03:23:53.920 | he was doing really interesting work there and then before my first chat to him one of

03:24:03.600 | my colleagues said like you know i think i read something about this guy something to do with

03:24:10.880 | pigeons and i like looked up richard lewinson pigeons and like oh my god he's he's taught

03:24:17.200 | pigeons to diagnose disease certainly histopathological slides it's just remarkable

03:24:24.880 | yeah he's like sometimes like to say AI stands for avian intelligence because of the pigeons

03:24:32.240 | because he i mean and he ended up the pigeons got roughly the same level of

03:24:35.680 | accuracy as yeah expert pathologists you see things like for example like use multiple pigeons

03:24:43.600 | and average out to predictions around it gets better it's like it's funny because like techniques

03:24:47.440 | an ensemble of pigeons yeah exactly an ensemble of pigeons i mean that's something so he's obviously

03:24:52.880 | okay so like based on the fact that a he attempted to replace human pathologists with pigeons and b

03:25:01.440 | he brought under his wing a kid to supervise on a phd he's obviously open-minded yes he is and all

03:25:10.880 | crazy or something yeah i think yeah he's um he's got unique ideas like ideas you know a lot of

03:25:19.680 | people don't tend to think about and um i think that's yeah and you can see that like with his

03:25:26.080 | career like he's got a very um different career right like his career was you know he did MD but

03:25:33.360 | he never like really was much of a practicing pathologist in fact or that he like a professor

03:25:39.680 | but then like after that he went into industry and he was actually working a lot in like

03:25:43.680 | hyperspectral cameras and stuff like that so he was doing a lot of optics actually right and then

03:25:48.880 | even you know at his time in these companies working in this field he actually started

03:25:53.920 | applying neural networks so like very basic you know perceptrons which is like the basic

03:25:57.920 | sort of neural networks like very basic that was he was already applying this must have been in like

03:26:02.320 | early 2000s so he has some he already had actually some you know machine learning

03:26:07.440 | experience from that side of things um so i mean but like you know he's got a very unique path through

03:26:14.960 | you know through you know doing math going through medical school and becoming you know

03:26:19.840 | this professor and then doing industry and eventually he was like you know he says like

03:26:24.720 | he got i guess he got called to join EC Davis and he just joined EC Davis. So Tanishk what was it

03:26:30.800 | like when you met him? Um i mean he was certainly a very um he was a very uh interesting but very

03:26:40.000 | friendly character right he was like you know and he was like you know huge he had he has like the

03:26:45.200 | pigeon poster there and you know we have it in the hallway of our lab and so he's like showing that

03:26:49.920 | and he's showing of course the research and so you know you know he was very excited to show

03:26:54.960 | and then we just connected about other things too like he also was like he's got like in like a

03:27:01.440 | musical background so of course um he i think was also like in the San Francisco boys chorus just

03:27:06.480 | like i was you know yeah which we hadn't talked about right so yeah you're piano and choir right

03:27:11.440 | is your yeah i did i did choir when i was younger i played piano a bit and like when i was again

03:27:19.200 | really young then i think i just can't i i you have half of them i kind of stopped and like

03:27:23.920 | never really like pursued that any further i know that feeling yeah which i think my president like

03:27:29.360 | oh no like i mean you know we spent a lot of money on those things but like yeah i i remember

03:27:36.160 | when i was like 13 or something and i i said very earnestly to my mom like i want to stop doing

03:27:42.160 | piano lessons i've done them since i was like seven and she was like are you sure you know one

03:27:46.240 | day you might look back and regret that because it's like you know and i was like no i'm absolutely

03:27:51.040 | sure i have no interest and now i look back and i regret that i think not that i've told mom i

03:27:57.600 | wouldn't admit it to her unless she watches this but you know yeah um like parallel is like yeah

03:28:03.280 | something like i don't know like i guess like yeah i mean of course still know like base very basic

03:28:08.480 | stuff of course but like i don't like choir is something like i think i think now it's like

03:28:15.280 | at the time like yeah definitely i think i want to continue at the time so like i wasn't far from

03:28:20.080 | like maybe five years old to ten years old something like that so i was there for like

03:28:25.520 | five years or whatever um and i was so i was there for quite some time and um and so yeah i

03:28:35.360 | was i kind of wanted to continue but then the thing was i became a full-time student so i'm

03:28:42.880 | like a full-time student where i was taking you know i graduated high school and i went to community

03:28:47.840 | college now as a full-time student taking multiple classes per semester as opposed to standard two

03:28:52.400 | classes so it wasn't working because this is in you know san francisco and i live in sacramento

03:28:58.080 | and it was like a hour and a half drive up well you know both ways it's like three hours just

03:29:03.360 | driving and this is like two days a week so that's like six hours in a week is just got gone in and

03:29:09.760 | you know just you know in the car and you know that was so it was like there's a lot of time

03:29:15.360 | commitment you know even just the regular classes were like again like two hours and then the like

03:29:19.920 | if when you get closer to the actual concerts or like multiple rehearsals because like sevens

03:29:25.680 | voice courses like one of the top voice courses in the world right but actually like san francisco

03:29:31.440 | voice course and like the Vienna voice courses something like that like these are like top

03:29:35.440 | courses in like voice courses in the world so like they're very top-notch and very professional and

03:29:42.080 | so and actually i got a it's you know i actually got to sing like for example aisles are saying

03:29:46.960 | that the the national anthem at the giants game actually wow i had no idea yeah so even i i've

03:29:55.040 | sung the national anthem and also for the oakland so maybe you and your sister can swap some time

03:29:59.840 | and she can start doing the fast ai course and yeah but like so i an event like i think yeah

03:30:08.400 | that's kind of where my sister like became really passionate about music actually because she

03:30:13.120 | sometimes coming into a lot of my you know classes you know my my maybe you know my mom is driving

03:30:19.040 | me and she's taking my sister along and my sister really was like enjoying that she's like why can't

03:30:23.760 | i sing in the the chorus of like it's a voice chorus oh you can just so um um but then she

03:30:30.720 | became really passionate about music at that point i mean she's you know it's already kind

03:30:33.600 | of playing around with like singing like that she's not like why can't i train neural nets

03:30:38.720 | that's how she felt like that unfortunately i would be happy just like that but that's not

03:30:42.800 | no but um yeah so actually in a way like that kind of maybe jumps maybe helps with her

03:30:50.480 | you know interest in that so you know i think there's some benefit but um but then i think so

03:30:55.840 | like i was finished yeah as i went into community college i couldn't take this it was not working

03:31:01.680 | out in terms of the time commitment and stuff so i stopped but i at the time obviously as something

03:31:06.480 | i was pretty kind of i wasn't i was kind of sad about it but like i you know i definitely

03:31:11.280 | realized that you know like the community college is you know more important to me so you know that

03:31:16.480 | was a worthwhile sacrifice for me but like you know there was still like some aspect of it anyway

03:31:20.880 | so this was something you had in common with with richard yeah yes that was something i had in

03:31:26.000 | common um and then he also has like uh like he knew like i think he knows some of him he knew

03:31:31.840 | like relatives of like one of the these famous composers and stuff and he's just like a generally

03:31:36.320 | also like a musically minded person like goes to a lot of the concerts at UC Davis and things like

03:31:41.360 | that so we were just kind of connecting over that too and especially you know you know how my sister

03:31:46.000 | is also very interested in that kind of field and so was that like a pretty like did that all go

03:31:51.600 | pretty smoothly then like you guys connected and it's like okay this is obviously going to happen

03:31:56.640 | yeah a good connection and um so yeah i think at that point it was definitely something like yeah

03:32:02.880 | the funniest thing was like so he was talking about the cyclic ion research because like this

03:32:06.560 | is something like he was interested in pursuing already so this was like something like he's

03:32:10.960 | interested he was interested because i think i spoke to you guys pretty early on right because

03:32:18.560 | we were already interested in pursuing that yeah so that was like he was like already like let's do

03:32:23.600 | this and i remember we had a call and he was like oh you might know this guy he's you know from your

03:32:29.360 | community and i was like oh yeah i got to kind of yeah so so yeah immediately he was like already

03:32:36.480 | interested in psychodat stuff but it's kind of fine because like up to that point i was playing

03:32:39.840 | around with all this classification and segmentation or what these like different machine learning tasks

03:32:44.640 | um and then um but like these sort of generative tasks which is like what the psychogas stuff like

03:32:49.920 | i was yeah so psychogan is like a technique for taking an image and turning it into a different

03:32:56.560 | image exactly and that would be very useful in particular in pathology if you could take an

03:33:01.280 | image which is easy fast and cheap to acquire and turn it into an image which is slow and

03:33:09.760 | expensive and difficult to acquire but has like useful features for diagnosis whatever is that

03:33:15.920 | exact kind of idea basically yeah describe the research in a nutshell that i do yes um so

03:33:21.840 | but like those were techniques i hadn't played around with in the past and you know honestly

03:33:28.000 | i didn't at the time i didn't find it that interesting but then then i was like you know

03:33:31.600 | what i'll give it a try and still deep learning and it's still gonna be i think it'll still be

03:33:35.200 | fun so i i mean that's what i decided like i didn't i wasn't actually expecting to like

03:33:39.360 | really i wasn't sure if it's something i'd actually enjoy but like i figured like it's

03:33:43.920 | deep learning and this is like still very cutting edge and you know again the application is what

03:33:48.320 | matters to me the most i think you know that it has a useful application at the end so i i decided

03:33:52.960 | to give it a try and now i'm like really all over this sort of generative um these sorts of you know

03:33:58.960 | machine learning tasks and so that was kind of funny um but yeah like it like you mentioned like

03:34:03.840 | this was something we wanted to do early on so like you say you know this is a project that i'm

03:34:08.480 | interested in he had some other projects too but this was like the one i figured like okay i'm i'm

03:34:13.360 | gonna give this one a try there's like one other project that he also suggested and i gave that a

03:34:17.520 | try but then i i didn't find it as interesting so this is the one that i really pursued uh and then

03:34:23.120 | and then i think i saw like for example i think i so i saw i think the talk with jason antich at

03:34:29.520 | like facebook or something i think that so i just discovered he's we we're meant to pronounce his

03:34:34.080 | name jason antich by the way so even though i've been butchering it for the last few years so yes

03:34:39.680 | okay jason antich being you know another fast ai alum who's gone on to great things he started a

03:34:45.920 | startup based on exactly these kind of techniques but um in his case it was taking black and white

03:34:51.760 | photos and taking them into color photos yeah so like i saw that talking i was like wait this was

03:34:57.600 | something that we talked about like in the lesson right and i was like well this is something that

03:35:02.480 | maybe would work well here and like these are some of the techniques that i think we should examine

03:35:07.840 | in and study um so i brought that up to to my to my best doctor lennison and he was like oh i know

03:35:15.520 | jeremy i was like wait hodinson jeremy and it's like it turns out like he knows like a lot of

03:35:21.120 | people right so he knows like i think he knows you yeah he knows you he knows um like he knows

03:35:25.280 | daphne coleur oh yeah she's the one who's doing like also i think i think she's doing pathology

03:35:30.320 | stuff too now yes she was so she was involved in the computational pathologist seed path project

03:35:35.440 | stanford with andy beck well but i think the the startup that she's working on is still also um

03:35:41.520 | i think it's called in citro or something like that yeah that's right she ended up doing

03:35:45.200 | after after co-founding corsera she then founded a part of the thing at google's yeah yeah so she

03:35:53.040 | was you know she was so she you know it was kind of hard and he knows a lot of people in the field

03:35:58.720 | not just like in pathology but in deep learning and like in all these different fields i'm like

03:36:02.640 | wait yeah that's another that's another great thing about having you know the sort of pi he's

03:36:06.240 | very well connected which is also really nice to have like you know it's good to have or you know

03:36:10.960 | well connected and get you the resources that you need so like even you know of course like you know

03:36:15.840 | there are researchers who are you know the the leading researchers in the field so like he knows

03:36:19.760 | all the computational pathology researchers like pretty much all of them and so like so how old

03:36:25.760 | would you have been at that time when we were on that call together with richard yeah i mean like

03:36:32.000 | 15 maybe 14 15 yeah so so i mean like i um the thing i've really noticed about you tanish in

03:36:42.640 | the last four years um is like how much you've developed as a person um like really i mean you

03:36:54.640 | know what i think of you because i've actually said it publicly in the fast air course you know

03:36:59.520 | you're i think you're incredible like i mean obviously smart and hard working but also

03:37:05.520 | thoughtful and generous and kind and fair um yeah and you know i honestly when i was first chatting

03:37:17.200 | to you i kind of felt like you were pretty raw you know you were you you um you're you know nice

03:37:25.680 | enough guy and certainly smart and good to work with but i i i wouldn't have kind of put you up

03:37:31.920 | as one of the you know uh in the same way but like over the last four years it seems to me like you've

03:37:39.600 | really grown out as a person into somebody who's who's who's very special uh as very special human

03:37:48.560 | being um it like do you feel like you've been looking like that as i'm you know living my life

03:37:56.960 | so that's very interesting to hear for sure like yeah no it's quite striking for me uh

03:38:02.640 | you know and i and and interesting to like i you know whether it's like is it just

03:38:08.800 | you know there's actually a lot of years between being a 15 year old and a 19 year old but also

03:38:14.880 | like working you know on a doctorate you're you're part of a team and people are relying

03:38:23.840 | on you and you're having to navigate situations but not not as a precocious kid who's trying to

03:38:33.120 | force their way into things that hasn't been designed for them but as a colleague you know

03:38:38.960 | and um yeah so you know maybe there's just that that i don't know i don't know where i'm going

03:38:44.480 | with this but um i've been to hear what your thoughts are about the experience of like

03:38:48.560 | doing a phd and whether that was quite a yeah different experience to the before

03:38:55.040 | so actually this was back it's interesting you bring that up in terms of like being a kid who's

03:38:59.520 | like trying to do because like so like like even in bachelor's like at a certain point

03:39:06.240 | like people though most people don't realize like if they're meeting me for the first time

03:39:10.320 | they don't realize that i'm young like i mean oftentimes i'm not going to um mention that you

03:39:17.280 | know the first time like i'm gonna say hello i'm tanishan i'm 19 years old that's not how i'm gonna

03:39:21.680 | introduce especially because like directly related to research that's not obviously not

03:39:24.800 | how to do i mean even like yeah so even though i have bachelors i think like i've taken a couple

03:39:29.920 | classes where i went the entire class and no one knew you know anything about me and i was

03:39:33.600 | like that's fine i don't really care but like i think of course within the um within the actual

03:39:38.800 | my actual class of the the biomedical engineering batch or whatever um they all knew because you

03:39:46.400 | know that that news is going to spread up pretty quickly but outside of like you know taking other

03:39:50.000 | classes and stuff a lot of them didn't realize that i was so young and the same is true i think

03:39:54.720 | when i uh in my phd so yeah i mean i think like i think it was like i think yeah after like um

03:40:02.160 | basically like after 13 or 14 i think you know you don't really realize that you can if you look at

03:40:06.320 | me you don't realize that i think a lot of people don't realize i'm young i mean some people will

03:40:11.200 | still say you look kind of young and but they don't like you don't bring it up like oftentimes

03:40:15.520 | they'll bring it up until like sometimes maybe i might mention it in passing or something they're

03:40:19.360 | like wait you've been look you look young and you know that makes sense actually now like so uh but

03:40:24.480 | in my phd and i'm doing stuff you know most people don't realize my age i think there may be maybe a

03:40:31.200 | couple collaborators i don't know if they know my age or not like i never bring it up um and i just

03:40:36.480 | interact as i would um as a regular yes it's just a regular researcher i imagine that feels pretty

03:40:41.600 | good sorry i imagine that feels pretty good i mean you know because like it seems like you you had

03:40:49.040 | years of trying to prove that you deserve to be somewhere you know and kind of like and also like

03:40:59.440 | not really being able to quite do the same things in the same ways as everybody else um yeah that

03:41:06.080 | must be a real nice change yeah like yeah i felt yeah i definitely feel like um

03:41:13.680 | well i think there's still some i mean at this point it's like some of it is like um

03:41:19.360 | i do think like sometimes i worry if i'm like you know behind in terms of research uh output and

03:41:27.280 | things like that and still a concern that i do have i think i think it was i think it's less

03:41:31.920 | of concern now because like i'm seeing the end of the tunnel and i'm seeing like yeah i'm gonna get

03:41:38.080 | like you know a few papers and you know i've done like good research and but i think i mean i was

03:41:43.920 | beginning the the again beginning my phd and beginning the um in even that original phase in

03:41:51.840 | in dr lemonson's lab i was still kind of worried about that how's that research output gonna look

03:41:57.920 | like i mean those are all very normal phd reactions though it they are but also um

03:42:06.400 | yeah i don't well the other thing is like again you it just depends like yeah i think i think

03:42:15.360 | there's certainly a lot of like comparing to you know you compare to others and you kind of see

03:42:19.920 | it always seems like you know that's it's it's not the best thing to be doing but it's still

03:42:24.000 | like you know something that kind of naturally happens right like of course you know you should

03:42:28.480 | compare yourself to others you should be comparing yourself to yourself and yeah easy to say that's

03:42:33.520 | what that's what people say but it's still you know hard to you know practice what people are

03:42:38.560 | saying in terms yeah no i mean the people that say that probably don't practice so you know there's

03:42:44.480 | definitely still that aspect of things you know i'm seeing like my call you know my colleagues

03:42:49.760 | oh they've got like five ten papers like oh my gosh i only have like one or two and like

03:42:54.640 | the other thing is you know i'm definitely in this i'm in a different environment a lot of

03:42:59.760 | them have labs that you know have 10 20 people maybe you know even larger than that they're

03:43:05.040 | working a lot of collaborative projects in my case my lab was actually a very small lab actually i'm

03:43:11.280 | the only phd student in vol hab wow which is a very unique situation to be in um and what

03:43:17.920 | of and i'm actually uh dr ledinson's first phd student so we're actually operating at the same

03:43:23.520 | time so the phd you know process um so and then so you know there's it's a very good now you have

03:43:32.320 | quite a few papers to your name yeah i do have some papers so i'm i'm i'm definitely

03:43:38.160 | a little of you know proud proud of that and i'm seeing there and a book at least one book chapter

03:43:42.800 | that i'm aware of yes yeah that too which that was luckily something that you know i got that

03:43:48.000 | opportunity um you know shortly after i joined the lab so i was very happy about that um and so these

03:43:53.760 | sorts of opportunities definitely you know put my uh worries at rest um i mean you know still you

03:43:59.360 | kind of i still kind of worry about it once in a while but i definitely feel like i'm in a much

03:44:03.280 | better situation now um but you know apart from i mean yeah as you said those are probably regular

03:44:09.680 | phd worries but um yeah apart from that you know i'm definitely very satisfied i guess um the path

03:44:16.720 | that i've uh that i've been taking in terms of yeah the phd seems to be going all yeah it was

03:44:23.200 | like a regular phd and yeah the thing was except for the fact that you you know now also have

03:44:30.640 | a job um a very interesting and exciting job um yeah i i guess we're like i just i wanted to

03:44:38.560 | kind of ask like i just wanted to reach up one other thing yeah please i was going to say like

03:44:45.840 | but i really enjoy you know of course doing this sort of computational research right like it's

03:44:52.160 | very it works i think that's something that you know for the longest time i tried to do

03:44:57.360 | this sort of hands-on research and i guess that's just something that you know just doesn't maybe

03:45:02.720 | work as well for me but then the computational stuff it's very flexible um you know but i you

03:45:08.560 | know i just i can still get a lot of my work done wherever i am and it's really nice you know

03:45:13.280 | especially you know during the pandemic you know all the other students they couldn't complete any

03:45:18.560 | of their research and they just got down right so but i managed to still you know continue with

03:45:24.560 | my research actually absolutely but also like computational work like you you know you we

03:45:34.640 | create stuff that didn't previously exist out of raw code you know and we can create lots of things

03:45:43.920 | and we can try them and we can compare them and it's like such a act of creation you know

03:45:51.680 | and creating things is just magnificent but i'd like let's see it's that's how i feel about it

03:45:58.480 | yeah it's again like i think it's always good to like get external perspective on these sort of

03:46:04.560 | things because like you know as i do the research like you know it just feels like oh is this the

03:46:09.680 | research that i do on a day-to-day basis and it's like okay this is what i'm doing and like i'm also

03:46:13.760 | like you know analyzing the results it's like oh this is not perfect and like this is issues here

03:46:17.840 | and this issue is there and like oh i get to figure out how to improve it but then i like this

03:46:21.840 | there's this project i'm working on i'm working on with some collaborators and i'm showing these

03:46:25.840 | results to the collaborators and they're like this is this is amazing and this is like stuff that

03:46:30.480 | wasn't possible before and like this is like you know you couldn't you couldn't you couldn't really

03:46:35.680 | get you know these sorts of images ever right like because this collaborator that we're working with

03:46:41.360 | and it's like actually doing in vivo imaging or kind of like that's not necessarily in vivo it's

03:46:45.840 | like during a surgery doing imaging and stuff like that and it's like you know getting the same sorts

03:46:50.480 | of images that you get with the standard pathology workflow and doing that sort of conversion like

03:46:55.680 | you mentioned going down this cheap and easy approach that you can do um within the surgery

03:47:02.240 | to this more expensive knowledge that you could ever do within a surgery and i mean it's nice for

03:47:06.320 | me because i you know as you know was somewhat accidentally doing similar things to you but at

03:47:13.600 | the Salk Institute you know again kind of microscopy imagery construction stuff and yeah same thing like

03:47:20.240 | the folks that we worked with took that work and literally met a brain connectome you know

03:47:30.000 | as just like wow that's you know nobody's ever seen that before yeah so it's like that kind of

03:47:38.400 | aspect like yeah and take a step back and like damn no one has been able to do this before or

03:47:43.760 | like you know no one has seen this sort of thing before right then then especially when you hear

03:47:48.640 | that external input and feedback from people then you kind of realize it but you know on a day-to-day

03:47:54.480 | basis it's it's hard to kind of hit well it is because particularly on a day-to-day basis training

03:48:00.000 | deep learning models is extremely tedious and frustrating at least it is for me it's no it is

03:48:06.960 | frustrating and tedious and i and then also a lot of the work i do is like image like working with

03:48:12.080 | images and like you know you know so like this sort of approach that i take with the research and i

03:48:16.800 | think this is again an approach that dr lemonson has also like really pushed for is you know kind

03:48:21.360 | of focused on the data and like you know he always likes to say garbage in garbage out which is a

03:48:26.000 | common thing though you know there's a lot of focus on the data and making sure the data is the best

03:48:29.760 | quality and so a lot of my work also involves working with the data and just analyzing the data

03:48:35.040 | and you know cleaning up the data things like that and so that's a lot of tedious work in that aspect

03:48:39.360 | of things as well um so um yeah there's definitely a lot of tedious work that goes into it and

03:48:45.680 | sometimes you know sometimes it's not as maybe flashy as you know inventing a new method all

03:48:51.520 | together and things like that but it still has a you know um a useful impact and you know has a

03:48:58.720 | useful application at the end so yeah i think that definitely motivates me that you know you you do

03:49:06.240 | get something that you know could have a difference um and you know that doesn't necessarily need to

03:49:12.400 | be with flashy new architectures it can be with you know sometimes boring architectures um like

03:49:17.920 | the psychogand is actually a very old architecture but it works surprisingly well uh you know

03:49:22.960 | especially give it the right data um and so those are the sorts of things it's like you know giving

03:49:27.600 | it the right data what other picks can we use things like pre-training stuff like that yeah

03:49:31.840 | um sorry these i should not afford them you know um you know saying but and what's like um

03:49:36.880 | i kind of like you know curious thinking as a parent what what's what's kind of like you know

03:49:46.240 | your your parents particularly your mom you know we're heavily involved in teaching you stuff and

03:49:55.680 | your mom was there at a community college you know during the theology with you whatever um

03:50:01.760 | have you been like taking them along for the ride like do they know what psychogans are and stuff

03:50:08.560 | like that are they like or how much are they telling them about what's about you know your research

03:50:15.280 | yeah i i mean i i talked to them about it um so i mean they definitely have an idea i don't think

03:50:23.680 | they maybe fully understand the nitty gritty details um but you know sometimes they'll

03:50:28.400 | joke oh oh you talk about it but psychogans and um you know all the thought you know all the different

03:50:33.440 | words that i you know talking about my research and like for them they'll uh they'll be um you

03:50:38.080 | know sometimes joking about it but you know it's probably easier for them to appreciate your

03:50:42.720 | sister's work than your work i guess yeah that's definitely true uh that isn't good point yes no i

03:50:48.960 | think that is definitely uh very true um yeah that's that's yeah um but then like i mean i still like

03:50:56.160 | also practice sometimes my presentations with you know with my parents like like some of them will

03:51:01.120 | still practice like um yeah like i'm like i've done that since i was very young and i still do that of

03:51:07.520 | and um that so they certainly have an understanding of kind of the general ideas of my research

03:51:15.040 | but not of course of the nitty gritty details but um yeah i think they are also kind of amazed and

03:51:22.080 | you know i also they of course gave a lot of the sort of external feedback you know that they're

03:51:27.680 | also very amazed by what i'm doing and it's like yeah again it's like and do you kind of yeah it's

03:51:34.640 | like okay maybe maybe it is kind of interesting but like i feel like this is like normal and like

03:51:38.880 | and sometimes i'm also feel like i'm not doing enough right like i want to do more and i always

03:51:43.280 | want to do more but they're like you've done a lot already and it's like yeah sometimes it's nice then

03:51:49.840 | to hear that and then then kind of take that step back and kind of realize yeah and if you've been

03:51:54.720 | talking to them about like your have you been talking to them about like you know like joining

03:52:01.440 | stability and like you know i mean i talk to them about all these things like everything i'm

03:52:08.560 | involved in and they they're there to provide you know a lot of advice and feet and support and

03:52:15.680 | you know they help they help me out a lot in that sort of aspect so there's a lot of yeah it's very

03:52:19.760 | i'm lucky to have a lot of that family support and you know i try to rely on that um if you know as

03:52:26.480 | much as possible if i can um so yeah so they're very you know proud and excited of what i'm doing

03:52:32.800 | at stability as well um and you know they've been you know they've also yeah they yeah they're just

03:52:39.600 | also very excited as well so like are you kind of like almost at a at a new stage now like it feels

03:52:48.960 | like like from what i've heard you say both in interviews when you were younger and today and

03:52:54.880 | chatting to you like you had this long-running dream you know of like medical biological research

03:53:02.720 | get a phd and in March or whenever that that will be done does that feel like kind of like

03:53:13.920 | completing a certain stage of your life you know and like and like did you always have dreams about

03:53:20.240 | what happens after that or are you now kind of like moving into uncharted territory or

03:53:24.320 | how does that feel so so i don't know like you know i've definitely mentioned in the past that

03:53:30.240 | i want to um go to medical school right and then that was like something like that's something i'm

03:53:37.680 | still so the reason of course i'm one of the medical school is to make an impact with medical

03:53:43.840 | research and still in that avenue but i've been thinking you know i've kind of think about that

03:53:48.240 | and if that's something i want to still do and i think i've been kind of like talking to people

03:53:54.160 | about that now so like i mean i'm certainly going to take like a couple years off i think

03:54:02.800 | you know one or two years definitely like as it is a break but if i if i am going to go to medical

03:54:06.800 | school yeah you made a couple of years off study exactly yeah because then you get a medical school

03:54:11.360 | again another like um you know it's a lot of memorizing and more more studying and you know

03:54:15.760 | i've done that for i don't know for a very long time and also medical school is very specifically

03:54:22.080 | you know like in a lot of ways it is a trade school you know which is teaching the trade

03:54:26.240 | of being a doctor which is not really what you're trying to do yeah it's i mean i i guess the thing

03:54:35.120 | is i guess part of me believes that like that is really important skill to have if you want to

03:54:43.120 | kind of maybe understand you know what things need improvement and need change in in in the field and

03:54:52.640 | i think it's also like like the way i've always thought about it was like if you find a practicing

03:54:57.040 | doctor then i get to have more hands-on experiences with patients and understand better the sort of

03:55:02.640 | challenges that patients are facing um but then of course there's also that aspect like maybe you

03:55:07.120 | don't need to do that you can just talk to doctors and talk to patients and maybe that's not a

03:55:10.880 | requirement so i'm still trying to figure out maybe what is that yeah what is it almost reminds

03:55:16.160 | me of like me now being a homeschooling dad and trying to learn about teaching and i spend

03:55:22.960 | dozens and dozens and dozens of hours listening to interviews with teachers

03:55:27.520 | and like i hear them describing their challenges and frustrations and processes and whatever and

03:55:34.160 | yeah it's not the same as going to you know to school to learn to be a teacher and then practicing

03:55:41.280 | being a teacher but the difference you know in terms of like percentages like one percent of the

03:55:47.520 | works or 50 percent of the upside or something i don't know again i think the difference is you're

03:55:53.600 | still doing the teaching right you're doing the teaching with your daughter right that's true i

03:55:57.440 | am you're still having a hands-on experience and you have that experience to kind of learn from

03:56:03.760 | yeah and i guess i have more expertise in teaching my daughter than anybody else in the world

03:56:08.880 | exactly right and so well yeah like i was saying like yeah i think um i mean as you said that you

03:56:16.400 | know you are of course the expert in in teaching your daughter and i think like to a certain extent

03:56:21.840 | you know doctors are the expert in you know creating their patients um i so i i think there

03:56:30.320 | is value potentially in in um going to medical school and becoming a doctor there may also be

03:56:36.400 | valuing going to medical school and not necessarily becoming a doctor but still that process of going

03:56:41.520 | to a medical school i've seen people who've done that and they they seem to uh you know make a huge

03:56:47.200 | impact i think recently i heard a talk by someone from stanford who did that sort of process and he

03:56:52.720 | was he's he's done um uh you know he went through medical school and then he went into industry and

03:56:57.680 | you know in the form of several startups um you know creating medical devices and getting into

03:57:02.720 | clinic and he's now a professor at stanford uh teaching those sorts of same principles

03:57:08.480 | but like you know he clearly got a lot of value also out in his that medical knowledge um so i

03:57:14.240 | think so yeah i guess you know it's something i'm trying to explore right now and figure out what

03:57:19.200 | is the best path um and then similarly it is also something i have to figure out what to do right

03:57:24.080 | after i you know finish my phd because uh the medical school stuff is you know a couple years

03:57:29.680 | down the line but the ph you know after phd is just six months down the line so i'm trying to

03:57:33.840 | figure that out right now too yeah so i had you know so what's the kind of like

03:57:37.760 | sorry what's the what's the north star or whatever that's what that's that's guiding you in these

03:57:44.560 | thoughts what does you know what where do you want to be in 10 years or 20 years or 40 years

03:57:53.760 | yeah um it's yeah it's not like it's certainly true like i think like you know it was that's

03:58:00.480 | something and kind of like i mean i i just want to be able to um to make an impact right so i think

03:58:10.080 | this part of it is like you know getting something to the clinic is kind of my goal and in life just

03:58:19.600 | having something that mom you know it's something that's helping people to not be sick is that

03:58:26.960 | exactly yeah so um i think there's many paths to that um so it's just like what may be the best

03:58:34.480 | path for for me uh personally um there's of course you know academia which has its advantages but also

03:58:43.360 | many disadvantages um there's of course industry again there's a lot of you know again this is a

03:58:48.880 | similar situation there's still disadvantages and advantages with industry so it's kind of weighing

03:58:54.640 | those up those yeah i mean i think if i could like add my perspective because in a sense

03:59:00.320 | my question is not quite fair because i feel like it's like asking somebody what their favorite

03:59:06.240 | color is you know we don't actually necessarily have a favorite color and when you're younger

03:59:13.040 | i think a lot of us do as kids have like what do you want to be when you grow up you know

03:59:18.240 | but actually at least for me i got to a point where i what i really want to do is capture

03:59:27.920 | opportunities as they come along and like you know from time you know from moment to moment be

03:59:34.160 | living my best life with an overarching thesis you know and my thesis is very much about like

03:59:42.960 | kind of accessibility and fairness and you know opportunities for everybody and lack of gatekeeping

03:59:52.640 | and then you know i think about like well what you know where are my skills and what can i do

03:59:57.360 | at the moment and you know so like yeah as i mentioned i don't you know don't feel like you

04:00:04.000 | have to yeah you don't have some 20 year plan opportunities that you have you want to catch

04:00:11.120 | right because like stability is kind of like one of those opportunities because yes exactly

04:00:15.920 | like and like i didn't know existed a year ago i didn't and it's kind of funny like a year ago

04:00:22.320 | so stability ai is a company which it's just raised about a hundred million dollars and it's

04:00:29.680 | basically doing exactly what you and i have been talking about with our research

04:00:34.320 | generative modeling so it's creating images sounds texts whatever that didn't previously exist

04:00:43.040 | or or or reconstructing those things in interesting ways using deep learning um yeah and

04:00:52.400 | the um ceo is an ex hedge fund guy named emad um who's you know in the papers and new york

04:01:02.880 | times podcast and whatever else and um yeah i mean so how did you find yourself with stability ai

04:01:10.400 | did you reach out to him did he reach out to you or yeah so like yeah again so yeah it's just to

04:01:17.840 | kind of say like how i knew about stability ai like i didn't know about stability ai like say

04:01:24.160 | a year ago i had seen a couple of things about it i think i think for example um uh at from crowson

04:01:33.360 | who's like one of the leading researchers in in this field of ai art and yeah she's amazing

04:01:39.120 | image generation and stuff like that i saw like she was like getting getting supported by stability

04:01:45.520 | ai and that was like the only thing i've seen about stability ai basically and like entire

04:01:51.040 | online presence at the time this is like january of 2021 uh 2022 so like yeah basically the

04:01:57.120 | beginning of this year and there was a part of that there's like no online presence of this company

04:02:01.440 | um but emad yeah emad was like in the um in the discord servers so um you know there's one of the

04:02:10.960 | discord servers which is eluther ai this is again one of these sorts of so this is a popular text

04:02:16.640 | chat system yeah so yeah this this this is kind of a um you know the discord server was mostly

04:02:25.920 | focused on you know the deep learning research um that eluther ai is known for some of their

04:02:33.040 | sorts of um they have generated like developed some of these sorts of um open source versions

04:02:39.280 | or kind of replications of models like gpt3 and things like that like these sorts of again

04:02:45.680 | generative models but this was more focused on text instead of images so they have done like

04:02:50.640 | actual solid research and i think some of the data sets that they've created data sets and i

04:02:55.280 | think these data sets are actually used by a lot of these industry labs and things like that even now

04:02:59.520 | um so i was you know i've been i've been hanging around in that server you know you know talking

04:03:05.840 | about research and other sorts of things um and so i think at this at this point um i was specifically

04:03:12.960 | looking for uh for gpu resources oh and actually um it's funny that i mentioned that because

04:03:21.680 | we never actually talked about um you know the sort of support that you know was given to

04:03:26.960 | what you weren't provided actually right um because originally a lot of my research was provided

04:03:33.920 | uh the support in terms of like compute resources and gpu resources and also some expertise was

04:03:40.400 | provided through this organization that jeremy leads bamri uh he was at he led this at uh uesf

04:03:48.560 | and so actually that was kind of when when we met um with uh dr leminson you know uh talking about

04:03:55.280 | research that was kind of the outcome of that meeting in terms of me working with bamri i have

04:04:01.440 | an idea about that by the way which i'll talk to you about after our interview perhaps yeah that

04:04:07.120 | would be great to talk about but anyway so you know i got a lot of support from there in terms

04:04:11.920 | of compute resources and gps because that's of course a you know a huge limiting factor in terms

04:04:16.160 | of ai research um but if you still yeah the computers are expensive yeah gps are expensive

04:04:21.840 | but even if you have like you know a few good gps you can still do a lot of great research i mean

04:04:26.640 | i'm not like using thousands of gps actually in my own research i'm just using a few gps there's

04:04:31.360 | still like high-end gps and so some people my final is like a very but it's still like nothing

04:04:35.760 | compared to like the thousands of gps used to create these huge models but i think um so yeah

04:04:40.240 | i got some of that support through bamri they were providing those resources and i also worked with

04:04:45.120 | some great people there uh andrew shaw who was again i think he's also the fast ci alumnus um

04:04:51.280 | and also uh uh daniel o'connor he was a professor at usf um and so i was working with them and you

04:04:58.080 | know that was that was a very great collaboration but then unfortunately um you know the bamri

04:05:03.760 | i guess erasement kind of had to shut down um so then i was then i had i was able to find another

04:05:10.320 | like a short-term grant for a few months and and then that lasted till january and so now i still

04:05:17.120 | need resources for compute to complete my research research so i kind of just like message in the chat

04:05:23.360 | like oh i'm running out of compute i don't know what i'm going to do and i was just like just kind

04:05:27.120 | of like a general message or something like that and then he just like you know replies

04:05:30.720 | he replies with like a single wave emoji and he was like and i'm like oh hello what what are you

04:05:37.760 | why are you waving is there something that you can help out with and it was like yeah we can provide

04:05:41.840 | gps and he was and then and so then we started dm'ing and he was talking about stability ai and

04:05:47.680 | what the goals were and he was um um you know he said that he can provide gps for for research and

04:05:55.520 | also he even offered to then support my own research and you know provide a fellowship and

04:06:00.960 | because he said like he was any he's that's something that a program that he was starting

04:06:05.360 | is you know providing these phd fellowships to uh to you know researchers in ai so um i was

04:06:13.840 | one of the first apple one of the first uh um for folks to receive that fellowship i think i was i

04:06:20.000 | think it was actually um and so he provided that to me as well and so this was you know back in like

04:06:27.280 | january february or so and so since then i've actually you know been kind of involved in like

04:06:33.520 | you know going knowing what's going on and like kind of helping out here and there not officially

04:06:37.760 | an employee but you know getting support now through the to the you know through the compute

04:06:43.120 | but then also through the um uh you know you know through the fellowship but of course the fellowship

04:06:48.880 | was specifically for my for my phd and you know those stuff um and so since then i've

04:06:55.520 | you know been involved and i knew like some things were happening and i was like oh this

04:06:59.440 | kind of cool like what's going on here and and you know the whole stable diffusion stuff started

04:07:04.640 | happening and picking up and this was like by then it was like july and august and it was like

04:07:09.040 | you know what i think i might want to join this company and help out and and actually be part of

04:07:13.760 | this um yeah so and yeah so that i'd join in in i think august september yeah it's definitely

04:07:19.840 | history being made in real time yeah yeah so it was very exciting because like yeah he's the kind

04:07:25.280 | of guy who's like like and you know he's very like um down to earth in terms of like you know

04:07:30.480 | it's not like he's like a you know uh you know you think like he's an ex hedge fund manager and

04:07:34.880 | he's like oh like you know he's the ceo this big company like kind of like nowadays it's like you

04:07:39.440 | know big company you know he's getting interviews by all these people you know you don't really like

04:07:43.760 | he's like still praying down to earth and like talks to him to everyone and you know he's

04:07:48.640 | interested he's very active in some of his discord servers and will talk to folks about stuff and

04:07:52.880 | like so you know that's how i first interacted with what server and then it's kind of kind of

04:07:58.640 | interesting to see everything kind of play out and you know my you know my involvement in that

04:08:03.120 | as well so it's it's very exciting and i'm very lucky to to have discovered this and be supported

04:08:09.440 | by him as well and by stability ai so yeah very um let me ask you something at a more meta level

04:08:18.080 | which is um you know it's it's interesting that you mentioned that you know as a very young

04:08:27.440 | child you know you had an iq test and you performed highly on that and you know so obviously this

04:08:33.920 | intelligence thing going on um but like interestingly from my point of view

04:08:40.480 | in working with you i wouldn't say the thing that most stands out is like wow he's way smarter than

04:08:49.920 | everybody but actually wow your i don't know if exactly work ethic's the right word but your

04:09:00.160 | your your way of working is better than most people i work with like you reliably tend to

04:09:07.200 | follow through on the things that you say you're going to do at more or less the time you say you're

04:09:11.760 | going to do them you generally speaking don't express opinions about things with which you're

04:09:19.760 | unfamiliar but and when there's a paper or whatever that comes out you actually read it before you

04:09:24.480 | start talking about like these are all things that sound normal and obvious but they're not at all

04:09:31.280 | you know like very few people actually read the papers and very few people actually do the things

04:09:36.400 | that they say they're going to do at about this time they say they're going to do them um and

04:09:41.920 | like i really um enjoy that about working with you because i feel like i can actually have

04:09:48.320 | you know sensible conversations that are fact-based and are going to have follow-up and

04:09:56.320 | yeah so it's kind of interesting to me that you're clearly a bit of an outlier on two axes that

04:10:05.840 | don't necessarily correlate you know which is something about kind of you know hard work and

04:10:17.680 | reliability and and not no bullshit you know as well as intellect so like where does that kind of

04:10:29.840 | you know getting things done and actually doing the reading and uh or you know the fact that you

04:10:36.320 | have this like paper reading group and you make sure it happens each week and you make sure that

04:10:42.800 | there's somebody to present and you like it it's again it's not rocket science but as somebody

04:10:50.800 | i'm normally the person who organizes things because nobody else does so it's nice for me

04:10:55.520 | to discover somebody else in the world who actually does things reliably as well yeah

04:11:01.280 | i don't know like where do you feel like this is coming from is this something you've worked hard

04:11:06.400 | to make happen or is this just natural to you or well first of all i've i personally personally

04:11:14.400 | i feel like i'm not like a hugely organized person so like it's kind of interesting to

04:11:19.200 | hear that to be honest i mean i'm not either but like it's just a case of like just doing

04:11:26.080 | the things you say you're going to do you don't have to be terribly looking like this you just

04:11:29.840 | totally flake out you know i think i don't know like

04:11:34.800 | the thing is like also i feel like sometimes like you know there's like

04:11:39.600 | like when you say what do you mean by like doing what you say you do because like i guess maybe

04:11:46.720 | yeah because like okay so for example you say okay we're going to have a paper club

04:11:50.320 | it's going to be each week this is the time it's going to be you know well that actually happens

04:11:56.160 | you know and and you you know or you say like i say like oh i want to interview you for a podcast

04:12:03.840 | and you're like okay what time is it going to be and you you are there at that time and you make

04:12:08.000 | sure i don't know like i mean i think i brought a couple times but it's like it's follow through

04:12:14.960 | and and definitely the papers thing it's like not many people read the papers really but somehow

04:12:23.360 | still have opinions because of like something they read on twitter or something and you tend

04:12:27.120 | to be like okay yeah i read the paper in this section i saw this thing um i don't know i think

04:12:32.160 | you're i think you're reliable and um and authentic and honest and because like oftentimes like um

04:12:42.880 | like a lot of projects like you know i i feel like like there's like i have a lot of projects

04:12:47.920 | right like there's so many projects and sometimes projects kind of you know slip slip my mind or

04:12:52.720 | you know just kind of you know sort of they just become less priority so like for that reason

04:12:57.040 | oftentimes i feel like maybe i'm kind of flaky in certain aspects but so that's what like when i

04:13:02.240 | wasn't when i was i haven't experienced that so maybe that's just okay i'm just revealing my

04:13:08.960 | my claws down well i mean no i mean instead of i just want to say it's not a flaw like it's like

04:13:13.520 | that's part of prioritization i think the key thing is the things that you it's not so much

04:13:19.280 | that you let them slip but you make a conscious decision to deprioritize them and that you clearly

04:13:23.360 | communicate that to the people involved that this is not something i can work on right now i haven't

04:13:28.560 | always been good at that myself but it's something i want to be good at yeah so yeah when you were

04:13:34.240 | having when you're talking about like flaking and stuff like that i thought maybe that's what you're

04:13:37.120 | talking about i was like no i'm not i'm very bad at that kind of stuff but in terms of like things

04:13:42.480 | like yeah paper reading groups and stuff like that i think part of it is like like i guess there's

04:13:49.200 | like some aspect of it that's more like um forcing myself to like have some accountability i guess or

04:13:56.880 | something like that whereas like how do you do that paper reading group there are people there

04:14:01.360 | you know i'm you know there's some expectation to have something for them so it was that i think

04:14:07.200 | there's kind of that sort of aspect of things so by publicly stating this is going to happen you're

04:14:12.400 | exact requiring yourself to follow through exactly i think that's kind of what happens

04:14:17.920 | i got another hypothesis that i think might be related which is i think well i mean clearly

04:14:26.000 | you're somebody who just genuinely loves learning um and i am as well you know i really very much am

04:14:33.600 | but i'm not sure like it's that common to love learning as much as we do you know like i

04:14:40.640 | there's almost nothing i i mean i would rather spend time with my daughter than anything else

04:14:46.000 | but other than that like that i just want to learn things and i guess when that gives you a lot of

04:14:53.280 | joy you put time into it um yes i think there's certainly some of that but in terms of like yeah

04:15:03.360 | i think a lot of i think a lot of it like in terms of the paper reading group yes i was like

04:15:08.400 | i know i was like yeah that was that's an example they're like well i think the thing was like

04:15:12.880 | especially i created like the paper reading group like some was like maybe you should have a diffusion

04:15:17.280 | model paper that's so yeah just to explain it's like again a paper reading group that i i am hosting

04:15:21.360 | like every week and it's about these sorts of uh image generation models you know they're called

04:15:27.120 | diffusion models it's like the the mean this is the new form whether or not those old-fashioned

04:15:32.480 | cycle games some people still talk about um so i had someone was saying yeah we should have this

04:15:38.240 | study group and i was like sure i'll do it um and the reason i decided to do it was because

04:15:43.440 | i felt like this is a good way to force me to actually read a lot of these papers and on

04:15:50.960 | otherwise it is tough to to read you know papers and you know when there's so many

04:15:55.840 | you know there's still much to do and there's just a lot a lot you know there's um you know

04:16:00.320 | and there's so many papers to read so i figured you know this is this is just a good opportunity

04:16:04.000 | to kind of force myself to to dig into the literature more um so i think part of it was

04:16:09.680 | just like yeah um just giving you know kind of you know making these situations where i'm forced to

04:16:18.000 | you know how this public accountability and get the get the work done and so like that's what like

04:16:24.240 | just generally in terms of like you know research and stuff like that too like i have

04:16:28.800 | often meetings with my professors uh with my advisor dr leminson you know i have like a meeting

04:16:35.440 | at least once a week sometimes twice or even three times a week um because you know then it's like

04:16:41.440 | some form of accountability like okay i have to have something to show to my to my advisor and so

04:16:47.760 | how so i'll you know be able to do some experiments and show that um so it's just really helpful and

04:16:53.040 | especially as i'm the kind of person that tends to uh procrastinate a lot actually and i don't

04:16:59.040 | think most people realize that um no it's actually you know i tend to i am uh you know you know it's

04:17:06.480 | so funny because like it's interesting you say that because like i feel the same way about myself

04:17:11.120 | and yet i'm somebody who like is on the other end of this almost this exact question which is

04:17:15.040 | people are like how do you get so much work done and i was thinking like that question people ask

04:17:19.200 | me too and i'm like like i've gotten this question asked many uh you know several times and i'm like

04:17:24.880 | i cannot honestly i'm surprised i'm able to do this as well like i probably shouldn't be asking

04:17:30.800 | you the question that i can never answer for myself it's like it's like i'm always telling

04:17:36.080 | people like how i don't like if i was if i were better at high management and stuff like that

04:17:41.600 | a couple would accomplish so much more so like so it's like so there's definitely that aspect of

04:17:47.280 | things so like you know also having the accountability definitely helps like at least it will get done

04:17:52.240 | i'm still gonna probably procrastinate a little bit so like even like a lot of these um you know

04:17:57.360 | this paper reading group i'm like preparing it like the night of tour and so like i'm so the

04:18:04.000 | thing is like yeah i'm meant to be presenting it tomorrow's paper reading group and i have not

04:18:08.000 | prepared anything at this point maybe we should give you some time to do so um helping it

04:18:14.880 | yeah but the thing is like i've noticed like i think i realized like okay so like i tend to

04:18:24.320 | like i i do realize i tend to have like a faster um comprehension in terms of like i can

04:18:32.720 | read some paper and like understand it fairly quickly um and i know a lot of people tend to

04:18:39.040 | struggle with that and like like a lot of things i can read i mean read it and i can uh you know

04:18:44.800 | understand it very quickly and so that's how like like even with my procrastination i'm somehow able

04:18:51.280 | to manage it's not it's not the best situation to be in to be honest like somehow able to you know

04:18:56.240 | i've managed because like i can still pick up like so i think if in terms of like um like overall

04:19:03.040 | so like i'd overall tell people like what i like what i tell is like i'm certainly like

04:19:09.520 | i i will admit that you know i'm kind of above average right is it some something that you know

04:19:14.720 | i will say i'm i'm not the kind of person who likes to brag about these sorts of things but

04:19:19.040 | i will admit like you know maybe i'm you know i'm somewhat above average um of course um and i think

04:19:24.800 | that what i'm the what the main one of course i think the main things that i'm i'm pretty good

04:19:30.240 | at would be things like memory in terms of like quickly memorizing stuff and comprehension so i

04:19:35.840 | think those two things really help in terms of this sort of quick learning and you know these

04:19:40.880 | sorts of stuff but then i'd also say like and before i move on from the topic of you know being

04:19:46.240 | above average or whatever i think a lot of what i've been able to do is of course prove hard work

04:19:51.120 | and i think this goes back to your point about work ethic and stuff like this um you know the

04:19:55.680 | only way i've reached this level is mostly through uh hard work i i don't i don't think this would be

04:20:01.600 | possible if i was just you know if i didn't put any hard work into it it's like a combination of

04:20:08.400 | either definitely having some of those talents but then also putting in a lot of hard work and a lot

04:20:13.360 | of you know swearing and the sweat and blood and tears into this and you know you know you know

04:20:18.480 | working at it for for you know a long long time and so that's definitely that sort of work ethic

04:20:24.080 | is definitely something i mean the tinesity seems critical you know andrea yeah i yeah i think so i

04:20:34.960 | think um yeah so i i think also that's something i've you know definitely learned from you know

04:20:41.600 | my parents and i think they've kind of brought me up in that sort of you know those sorts of values

04:20:48.080 | in terms of hard work and like you know never taking these sorts of things you know these sorts

04:20:52.160 | of talents for granted and you know putting in the hard work that is necessary um so that's everything

04:20:58.880 | like people like oh you must be so you're still smart and everything must come easy to you um

04:21:03.120 | there's certainly some aspect that you know there's some comprehensive stuff that does come easy but

04:21:07.280 | a lot of it is still hard work that i have to still put effort into so it's not like everything

04:21:11.760 | comes easy to me um just you know you know automatically there's still some aspect that

04:21:16.720 | you know there's a lot of work that goes into it um yeah that's like something like that's

04:21:21.440 | sometimes kind of you know irritates me oh you're you know everything must be so easy for you and

04:21:26.400 | it's like no it's not it's like yeah exactly yeah you know in certain aspects i'm still you know

04:21:32.560 | like there's still like work you have to do it's like it's not like you can avoid doing

04:21:37.120 | this stuff you just can't avoid right you have to like put in the effort to to finish your homework

04:21:43.440 | problems to to um you know write your essays to you know whatever projects you're working on you

04:21:50.480 | still have to put in the effort on and so i know that's that's something that i and like even

04:21:56.640 | although like okay for you you're saying you you seem to pick it up a bit faster than other people

04:22:01.680 | but you're still starting with something that you didn't previously know and that at first you

04:22:06.480 | don't understand and then you have to struggle through and develop that understanding and then

04:22:11.120 | practice and exactly yeah i mean i say like even picking it up quickly i mean that's just to say

04:22:17.280 | like i can pick up you know you know the first like let's say if your best comprehension of the

04:22:22.560 | material is 100 you know you can pick up maybe the first you know 70 i can pick that up pretty

04:22:28.000 | quickly but then you don't even get that remaining 30 and you still have to put in put in the work

04:22:32.960 | right so it's more of like you know i definitely am able to get a very kind of a general gist and

04:22:38.720 | grasp of what's going on in a particular field or a particular paper or whatever but obviously if you

04:22:43.440 | want to you know truly understand it you do have to put in more work so like you know especially

04:22:48.800 | with this field of like diffusion models and stuff you know um you know i've been that even

04:22:53.760 | some of the original papers i still will go back and read like i mean i understand the general gist

04:22:58.320 | but there's still certain aspects that you want to like really you know to fully understand that

04:23:03.120 | those papers have to fully understand that field you know there's still certain parts that i still

04:23:06.880 | am studying um and then of course there's other aspects of it in terms of putting it into practice

04:23:12.160 | like you know in the case of these models and these sorts of deep and deep learning in general

04:23:16.720 | you have to code it up and you have to actually experiment and try it out and so you know there's

04:23:21.200 | also that aspect of things that also helps solidify your knowledge and there's really

04:23:26.000 | no way around that instead of except you have to do that so there's no way around those sorts of

04:23:31.360 | things and you know that provides you know this sort of different knowledge that you can't get

04:23:36.160 | anywhere else you have to do yeah yeah it is it is it's hard work and it um it's difficult

04:23:41.840 | and like i feel like that's the biggest difference i see between people i know that are extremely

04:23:47.280 | effective and those who are less effective is the people who keep doing it like for me personally i

04:23:54.880 | actually don't find i pick things up faster than most people but i seem to stick with things longer

04:24:01.440 | than most people and i also seem to be more like prepared to keep digging and digging you know

04:24:07.120 | it's like yesterday when we were chatting in our little study group and i asked about a paper that

04:24:15.440 | actually is extremely basic and i was like i don't think i fully understand this yet and i probably

04:24:21.200 | ought to and yeah just really took the time to get at it dig through it which in some ways it

04:24:26.960 | requires putting aside the embarrassment of saying like i don't fully understand this fairly basic

04:24:32.640 | paper yeah yeah but now i feel like i probably understand it better than a lot of people do

04:24:40.080 | having taken that time with you guys to dig into it carefully and going back into like yeah

04:24:46.880 | like understanding stuff like obviously um teach of course teaching this material really like like i

04:24:54.960 | guess this is like the was the Feynman Feynman technique right the Feynman technique is not

04:24:58.800 | you know try to teach it to other people and make and that also really helps um so like especially

04:25:05.440 | with this sort of diffusion model stuff like you know i've just been practicing in so many different

04:25:10.560 | ways right just through that in the term of teaching this material through the study group

04:25:14.800 | through like the study group that i host and then of course you know the sort of study groups that

04:25:18.800 | we have together um and then yeah well as we were saying yesterday when when we were chatting in our

04:25:24.480 | group it's like we're learning ourselves diffusion modeling through diffusion processes of like

04:25:29.520 | doing it again and again in a thousand different ways until eventually yeah makes it way into our

04:25:34.080 | brain yeah and so you know i have that you know that study group these two study groups then you

04:25:40.160 | know um you know this sort of uh you know writing it out in code and teaching try to teach it in a

04:25:46.320 | different way not just like from the paper but from the code and then like also like like i recently

04:25:51.120 | had this twitter thread and it's like you know that's a that was a different experience it's

04:25:54.880 | like how do i teach it in a you know we're in in those limitations of twitter it's like an

04:26:00.080 | entirely different uh kind of a thought process so and then i know i've just kind of written down

04:26:04.960 | you know in just different ways of explaining the same concept you know because i i kind of actually

04:26:10.160 | really want to you know you know understand diffusion models and kind of be actually an

04:26:15.120 | expert in that field to be honest so i just been trying to like really dive deep in that for you

04:26:20.720 | know i've been doing that for several months now and through all of these different you know

04:26:24.160 | platforms so i i think like and so like overall teaching it's something that actually in general

04:26:31.520 | i'm kind of passionate about um and it's but it's something like i don't know like again how good i

04:26:39.360 | am at it it's something that i'm i feel like i'm still trying to you know get better at especially

04:26:44.560 | i think we you know we've talked about this before it's like something that you know i you know myself

04:26:49.840 | i'm a person kind of like you know being at the plant person who grasps things fairly quickly or

04:26:54.960 | again as i talked about grasp you know the first 70 80 fairly quickly and you can get to that level

04:27:00.400 | quickly compared to other people um it's harder for me to like figure out like what exactly are the

04:27:07.040 | the the weak points or the sort of you know that makes teaching more difficult for you than other

04:27:11.760 | people right so um so that that's something that you know can be tough but um again i try to get a

04:27:19.040 | lot of external feedback when when talking about these sort of things to figure that out um but

04:27:23.680 | that's something but like i really enjoy teaching and you know that's another thing like that's

04:27:27.760 | another thing like going back to i keep changing topics here but like going back to like you know

04:27:31.760 | the you know careers and things like academia and stuff like that right like academia is another

04:27:37.120 | great opportunity to like you know it's a it's it is a good opportunity to teach and also i mean

04:27:42.800 | it should be ideal right it's like it's teaching and doing research but sadly the structure of

04:27:48.720 | academia is a bit of a nightmare yeah it it turns out like um activity is weird because like

04:27:55.680 | it's teaching and research but the environment doesn't or like the sort of problem you know

04:28:01.680 | bureaucratic processes or administration does not or like whatever it is it does not select for the

04:28:06.000 | best teachers and researchers right it's it's it mostly selects for like the best researchers

04:28:14.480 | then of course those are like the when you say best features there's still like the researchers

04:28:18.080 | would get the most grants or whatever they still link you know there's still probably lots of great

04:28:21.600 | researchers work you know to get those opportunities and stuff anyway that's kind of a whole diversion

04:28:26.720 | but like in terms of like even academia i've had very bad professors but then they're like

04:28:31.360 | amazing researchers in terms of like they've got a lot of grants and they've got a lot of papers

04:28:36.320 | and stuff and that's the reason they they they're stuck they they stick around at these universities

04:28:40.800 | and they get high you know high pay from these universities it's because um they're good you

04:28:45.280 | know they have good research labs but they are terrible at teaching um but unfortunately

04:28:51.120 | and unfortunately some of them just don't care about improving their quality of teaching um but

04:28:56.000 | i think that even in academia you do have at least like for someone who's interested in both

04:29:01.200 | teaching and research it does seem like a like a good place to be in and yeah so that's why like

04:29:05.920 | even even though i do know a lot of the disadvantages of academia i think there's also still

04:29:10.640 | some advantages for the source of things that i'm interested in you know that being teaching and

04:29:16.160 | research so that's why i'm still you know highly considering that as a potential

04:29:20.320 | pathway but yeah i'm just overall like also really excited about teaching and educational content um

04:29:27.520 | and i'm hoping i'm doing i'm doing yeah i hope it's going well and if people are getting i mean

04:29:33.520 | teaching is itself a whole you know research field yeah that one can study and yeah there's a lot of

04:29:42.000 | valuable research and how people learn and what teaching works well and yeah it's a really

04:29:49.520 | interesting field and i've mainly been studying it when really well well mainly been studying it

04:29:54.240 | for teaching my daughter but i studied a little bit before that the fastai courses but not right

04:30:00.800 | nearly as much as i do now yeah i mean i i definitely think the fastai approach of like

04:30:06.400 | this sort of top down something i can't hear you oh no you're back oh sorry did something

04:30:11.360 | has to be at all yeah just your top just have disappeared for five seconds okay anyway i was

04:30:16.800 | just saying um yeah i was saying that like i think i definitely think like the fastai approach of

04:30:21.440 | this top down and followed by the bottom up is really like a very yeah i don't know it's

04:30:27.200 | it's a very good approach i think and i i like it sorry i like it yeah um and i i i think like any

04:30:35.920 | sort of like material that i mean yeah it it's just like yeah it's definitely a hard thing to do

04:30:41.840 | like as a teacher right it's like hard to prepare that sort of material very hard as a teacher you

04:30:47.440 | kind of think about it from like you want to start from the foundations and work your way up and it's

04:30:51.440 | kind of hard to you know like change that kind of also we haven't seen many role models of teaching

04:30:59.840 | technical content top down so we haven't experienced what that looks like very often yeah yeah so

04:31:07.280 | it's you know and and but yeah i mean it definitely does say something that like someone like me who

04:31:13.760 | generally does start from the sort of bottom up approach and you know does fairly well with that

04:31:20.800 | bottom up approach and even then i'm getting a lot out of the sort of top down approach that's cool

04:31:26.080 | so i think i think it's also like it's not you know i mean yeah and i know a lot of yeah a lot

04:31:31.840 | of people you know struggle with the bottom up approach and that's why i do it yeah even as

04:31:37.360 | someone who does well with the the bottom up approach i think even then the top down approach

04:31:41.680 | is is very helpful often oh that's really cool oh that that's yeah i don't know where i was going

04:31:48.080 | with this to be honest yeah that's fine i'm very interested in your thoughts um yeah all right i

04:31:54.160 | think we should consider wrapping things up um depending on like um whether there's things either

04:32:03.200 | life things or work things or thoughts you have that we haven't covered and you'd be interested in

04:32:12.400 | chatting about that thing comes to mind i guess um yeah i mean i don't know like yeah whether

04:32:24.720 | on stage or i guess did it i just wrote maybe there were other really misconceptions about

04:32:30.560 | foul prodigies oh i would love to hear about that if the yeah well i know i know we discussed this

04:32:36.320 | before in terms of like um you know we this is again kind of random like we discussed it before

04:32:41.840 | but like child prodigies they tend to be i mean of course even this interview we talked a little bit

04:32:47.600 | about like you know child priorities tend to be you know sort of considered socially outcast things

04:32:51.760 | like that and we talked about that but then also like you know things like you know they tend to be

04:32:56.080 | considered oh maybe they're autistic and those sorts of um aspects of things um and i mean i just

04:33:04.800 | i just kind of like i mean i tell this to people like even in other interviews and in other places

04:33:10.240 | and when people ask me it's like yeah i think i'm fairly normal right like i think you're fairly

04:33:17.440 | normal yeah whatever it's said yeah um um and i mean we've had literally that with our daughter

04:33:24.400 | sometimes yeah not that often not that unusually people literally ask like oh does she have some

04:33:30.240 | sort of like i'm like oh she's quite advanced at school oh does she have social problems

04:33:34.160 | yeah like no and they don't even like they don't even almost seem to believe me they keep talking

04:33:39.760 | as if she asked just because she's doing well at school i mean there's there's like i think some

04:33:47.600 | you know um research into like you know yeah the sort of um coincidence like yeah the sort of thing

04:33:55.200 | where like you know both you know people who are smart and you know they tend to have autism and

04:34:02.320 | these sorts of yeah true is the term that tends to get used uh twice exceptional oh okay yeah um

04:34:10.480 | and so there's that so then i think yeah there's there is some correlation but yeah it's nowhere

04:34:16.960 | near 100 you know yeah exactly um if i remember correctly at one point like someone was like

04:34:23.040 | i think there's like some research and they're like um so where was i oh yeah i was saying like

04:34:28.240 | i think at one point like there were some folks who were interested and i think researchers

04:34:31.920 | in talking to us and things like that and studying us but then they were like then they heard we're

04:34:36.480 | not autistic or something like this and they're like oh we're not interested anymore we're

04:34:40.160 | interested more studying the you know the autistic part of things and um so um yeah i mean there's

04:34:47.840 | just generally this sort of like i think um just overall sort of stereotypes about about topologies

04:34:54.720 | and you know hopefully uh i'm you know as i've lived my life i think i kind of had um went against

04:35:05.040 | those stereotypes and yeah well in stereotypes are a lazy cognitive shortcut you know so it's

04:35:11.600 | very tempting and easy for people to put people into a bucket and then assign a whole bunch of

04:35:16.880 | things to them based on assumed group characteristics but yeah that prejudice is never

04:35:24.320 | good because no groups of humans are you know so identical hopefully these sorts of experiences

04:35:35.040 | that people see and and hopefully uh i mean yes as you said like yeah people are very complex and

04:35:41.600 | diverse and it's not this you know the stereotypes are not always applicable um and so yeah i think

04:35:48.000 | people should be more open to that uh-huh yeah and then just generally i think i was just going to

04:35:53.440 | make some general points of like yeah obviously um hard like like we mentioned this before you

04:36:00.960 | know hard work is always important um and then of course at least i'm the kind of person who

04:36:08.080 | who's very goal oriented i don't know if that works for everyone but for me it's always i've

04:36:11.920 | always thought it's useful to have a goal in mind and you know work towards that goal um at least

04:36:17.920 | that's how it's worth me and honestly i recommend people to at least explore that as a as something

04:36:22.800 | to try out um um and then yeah um and yeah i mean of course i of course i'm very lucky of course to

04:36:34.080 | have this a very supportive family um and i guess if there's any any parents or any folks like that

04:36:43.680 | who are listening i just would recommend to you know keep keep you know try you know whatever you

04:36:50.320 | can do to you know of course support your your children and because you never know what what

04:36:55.200 | could come out of it um and and more specifically i think like i would say support your children

04:37:02.080 | in terms of what they're telling you they want rather than what you think they ought to want

04:37:06.320 | yeah i was gonna say like don't push them in in terms of like yeah like i was never pushed which

04:37:13.200 | is which is a good thing honestly it's i forgot to mention is like there are many times in my

04:37:18.160 | parents like maybe you're pushing yourself too much and it's like honestly there's also that

04:37:22.560 | aspect of things like also you know there's also needs to be sometimes trying to have those breaks

04:37:29.600 | i guess um which is like which you know in this case my my my parents are the ones who kind of

04:37:35.200 | provide that i think um they they if any yeah they never have really pushed me and everything they

04:37:41.920 | were like if anything they they want me to slow down a bit i think um so i think um yeah you don't

04:37:50.720 | want to push your in yeah children yeah never really should be pushed but they should be

04:37:55.600 | supported in what they're interested in and what they're passionate about and of course like what

04:38:00.880 | you're passionate about interested can change over time but you know you just kind of whatever it is

04:38:06.400 | it's worth supporting it um and so luckily you know i've i've had all of that thanks to my parents

04:38:14.080 | and my family um you know so i mean yeah not just my parents of course even my sister you know is

04:38:20.160 | supportive you know comes comes along to to to all these classes and weights there and things like

04:38:26.160 | that and you know even i'm i try to be supportive with her go to all of her performances and things

04:38:30.000 | like that so you know that's also good that we're lucky to have that sort of family unit that's very

04:38:36.000 | supportive of each other yeah so um yeah so yeah that's mainly it and of course if you're interested

04:38:43.920 | in following me you like follow me on twitter and stuff you know i'm you know i'm mostly on twitter

04:38:49.280 | and you know we'll see i plan to i'm interested in maybe expanding from just twitter you know for

04:38:55.280 | for various reasons i bet but but i mean i really love twitter as a part of her in general um yeah

04:39:01.440 | and i've met a lot of amazing people there so i want to take on you know stick to twitter as

04:39:06.800 | much as possible but also i think some diversification is still also good in general right like you know

04:39:12.320 | they say that about like finance and they said about a lot of things you know being able to

04:39:16.000 | apply it and so i think that's probably also true in terms of my my social media and my

04:39:20.560 | personal brand probably yeah well tanish this has been an absolute pleasure and absolutely

04:39:28.080 | fascinating and i feel very very privileged to have you as our first guest on this podcast

04:39:37.440 | this amazing story and such thoughtful comments um i'm really grateful and uh at all this time

04:39:48.640 | so late at night thank you so much yeah i don't know people if people were watching don't realize

04:39:54.000 | that i'm i tend to be a night owl so this is totally fine for me what is the time for you now

04:39:59.440 | it is let's see well it's it's right now three o'clock but three o'clock in the morning okay

04:40:05.600 | well yeah but it's not it's not too bad it isn't well totally fine um yeah but yeah i'm

04:40:12.640 | adverse you know this was a great experience and i'm extremely honored to also be your first guest

04:40:17.280 | i think that's um it's interesting to it's yeah it's an honor to kind of start you out with this

04:40:22.960 | this new podcast and i'm sure this podcast will be uh you know extremely successful so i i'm

04:40:28.560 | it yeah i'm kind of you know honored to be that the first game that's crossed you out thanks mate

04:40:33.920 | Awesome. Appreciate it. Okay. Thank you. Bye. Bye

04:40:37.120 | Bye.

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