Hi, this is Jeremy Howard and this is episode one of my new podcast, Their Life and Work. In this podcast, I'm going to be interviewing people who inspire and interest me. I want to find out all about their life and work because I'm just fascinated by these interesting and inspiring people.

Why do a podcast? Well, partly I guess it's a bit of an excuse, an excuse to talk to people that I really want to talk in depth with. But partly because it's kind of how I've lived my life, I always look for things that are interesting and inspiring to do on the basis that maybe other people will find the work I create interesting and inspiring as a result.

So I figured, yeah, if I find these people interesting and inspiring, maybe some of you will as well. I've been lucky enough to meet a lot of fascinating people in my life. And I guess that's because I've had a perhaps unusually diverse background in terms of what I've done and where I've been.

I founded five successful companies, two in Australia and three in the US, including in medical AI, a company also called Kaggle in the data science space. And nowadays my focus is in deep learning. I run a research lab called Fast AI, as well as also being a honorary professor at the University of Queensland.

I spent 10 years of my life recently in San Francisco, although originally I grew up in Australia to where I've now returned and yeah, certainly got to meet a lot of really interesting people during that time in San Francisco where interesting people seem to flock, which is something really great about it.

Because I'm a dad of a seven-year-old lovely girl who we homeschool. So you'll probably get a sense that the kind of stuff I'm likely to be interested in talking about during these podcasts, the kind of people I'm likely to be interested talking to might skew a bit towards folks involved in AI and tech and startups and education and homeschooling.

Which has lots of links into my first guest. So for episode one, I'm going to talk to one of the most inspiring people I know and his name is Tanishk Abraham. Tanishk is only 19 and yet he's already achieved an extraordinary amount in his life. I feel sure he's going to achieve a whole lot more in the coming years and so I feel very proud that I almost get to be like his first biographer here, telling you a bit about this amazing person and how he's got to be where he is.

So what makes Tanishk interesting? Well I mean apart from anything else, consider who he is right now and what he's doing. He's 19 years old and he is about to finish his PhD which is quite extraordinary. And he is about to start his first job as the founding CEO of MEDAC, a very hot medical AI research group, connected to stability AI.

You might have come across them through all the recent kerfuffle about stable diffusion, the very exciting models that can create pictures just from a description. So Tanishk is doing very exciting research and very exciting work. His research is in the area of applying AI to medicine and specifically to medical imaging in pathology.

This is an area I've actually done quite a bit of work in myself. So I've got a lot of connections with Tanishk, not only because he himself was homeschooled and I'm now a homeschooling dad so I'm very interested in that aspect of things. Also the fact I started a medical AI company, in fact the first company to focus on applying deep learning to medicine and this is the area of his research and the area of the company that he will be the founding CEO of very soon.

And also the fact that actually the way I first got to know him is that he was a student of FAST AI, the courses that I create through my research and teaching group, fast.ai. And so I was quite struck when I first met Tanishk a few years ago. He was one of the youngest people to be doing our courses, our courses are really actually quite advanced and they're generally designed for people with quite a bit of background in computer programming and a pretty solid understanding of mathematics.

And here he was blitzing our most sophisticated courses as a teenager, in fact probably he must have been maybe 15 or 16 at the time so that was very striking. And then I discovered that he's actually at that age he had started doing a PhD in an area I was very interested in with a very interesting supervisor actually somebody who I had already known and spoke to during my work.

So I was very privileged to get to meet him and I will say over the years that have passed since then I've really been amazed to see how he has matured into such a thoughtful young man and I have the privilege of now getting to work with him and we do research together.

So if you're interested in finding out more about what makes somebody like this tick and how do they get to be in such an extraordinary position at such an extraordinary age then you will definitely enjoy this interview. His story starts in a sense actually when he was much younger he was actually getting national attention even as a nine year old.

He did some amazing things as a very young chap. For example here he is giving the youngest ever talk at NASA. My poster topic is about using citizen science programs and studying the number of topography. The two citizen science programs I talk about is Moon Zoo which is from Zooniverse a citizen science web portal and Moon Mappers which is from Cosmo Plus a developing citizen science web portal.

So by the age of nine Tanish could already been doing some college subjects for a couple of years and this definitely came to the attention of a bunch of folks and as a nine year old in fact he was profiled in a YouTube series called Prodigies. Here's a clip from that to get a sense of what he was doing back then.

We finished chapter 20 but it's a very important chapter so let's review that today. So anyone can tell me what are the main types of galaxies? Elliptical. Elliptical galaxies and spiral. About one year ago Tanis became my student in astronomy 300 and he ended up the class being the student with the highest grade.

Which ones are the most common ones in the early universe? What about today and what kind of galaxies do I find most often? How many people do you know at the age of seven or eight they can discuss the expansion of the universe? He is different in a positive way.

The most fun thing for him is learning so sometimes when people ask what do you do for a fun time? He says I just learn and then people just can't understand that. Tanish was in my geology lecture and lab class at American River College. Professor Stirling is actually the one who helped me get into college.

I've taken Tanisha into my wing because he has such potential. His challenges are that he is at an intellect level here but yet he's still a very kind and happy eight year old. Another thing that really brought him to the attention of folks all around America as a nine year old was he was part of the TV show called Child Genius.

Here is Tanisha being introduced on Child Genius. So here's my actual high school diploma. When you meet your competitors though are you going to hide and let you graduate from high school? Why should I keep it a secret? It's already like almost everybody knows it. Yeah since I just graduated from high school President Obama sent me a letter.

We're running a workspace and room space here putting up all his trophies and newspaper articles. Joking me we say we need a museum now for displaying all these things. He started taking college classes when he was seven years old. I started going to American River College I've got almost 45 units.

I may only be 10 but I've done some really cool stuff. His appearance on Child Genius even ended up with him appearing in talk shows such as Conan O'Brien where he got to show off some of his science jokes. You have jokes you have them with you I'm told.

You brought some jokes. Yes I brought some jokes. This will be the first jokes we've heard tonight. Let's uh let's uh can we can we hear your jokes okay so these are the kind of jokes you like because they're about yeah I've got some science jokes so okay all right let's hope you understand them okay the first joke is okay so why can't you trust atoms why can't you trust atoms I don't know because they make up everything but I think part of what has made Tunis such a tough and tenacious young man is that his interest in learning required fighting at every step there seem to always be this assumption that any kid who really wants to learn must have no life elsewhere or must be getting pushed around by their parents or whatever he gave a Ted talk as a kid in which he started to talk about some of this here's a sense of of what he was dealing with when I started out at seven taking college classes was just for fun later on I decided to get an associate degree in science and then transfer to a four-year university as an advanced education student you can only take up to two classes per semester and you'll last on priority for registration it's a struggle getting into the classes you want so far I've completed about 30 units but I still have trouble convincing colleges that I'm old enough to become a full-time student I wonder why that is well here's a reason I hear often I should enjoy childhood and have fun for me learning about particle physics is fun but I have other kinds of fun as well in reality I'm the one constantly reminding my parents that I want to learn more and more now the reason I'm inspired by to niche is not by what he did as a ten year old by but by who he is now he's somebody I work closely with we chat many times every week and I've known him for quite a few years and he's one of the most tenacious and hard working and thoughtful people I know and so I thought yeah I can't think of anybody better to start this podcast series with and I think hopefully by the end of this interview you'll have a sense of why this is somebody that I really wanted to get to know and to more deeply understand their life and work so without further ado here is my interview with Tanisha Abraham all right hello and welcome Tanisha Abraham thank you so much for joining us you are my first guest on this podcast which is both a blessing and a curse a blessing because you're the first guest on the podcast and a curse because every podcast looks back to episode one and says oh my god all the things I got wrong back in those days so thank you for helping launch us and being a bit of a guinea pig here well yeah thank you for having me it's a I'm very excited for this and yeah be hopefully be a very fun experience and hopefully there'll be many more episodes to come up so well maybe this would be so good that people will be like no you don't need to do another episode that was the atomic ideal of a podcast interview and everything down downhill from there so just stop yeah so Tanisha yeah I mean just tell us a bit about what you're doing in your life right now yeah so I'm a PhD candidate at UC Davis in biomedical engineering my research is focused on applying deep learning to microscopy and pathology so you know medical AI applications and yeah I've also been working part-time at stability AI also working on various AI research projects and medical AI projects yeah that's kind of where I am right now it's been quite busy but also very interesting and exciting to be I guess working at the forefront of AI research so I think that's very exciting and of course when you say PhD you know you're actually getting pretty close right so yeah yeah I'm planning to finish sometime around May so that's the plan so it's coming really close it's like you know six months from now so you know it's like oh yeah time was starting to kind of wrap up is like trying to finish up the papers that I have it's like so it's yeah it's it's getting close yeah well congrats and good luck on that so at the if you do finish in May how old will you be at that point?

I will still be 19 so my birthday's in June so be right before my birthday so I'll still be at 19 so yeah okay so yeah I mean everything you described you know makes you a very interesting person to talk to from a vocational point of view anyway but doing doing all that at the age of 19 I think is particularly interesting and I both like do you want to talk about that but almost also kind of don't I do in the sense that like I do think it's really interesting and I think I would love to hear more about it but I also don't want to pigeonhole you being like yeah you know you're you know X I guess you're not a child anymore so X child genius slash prodigy but like yeah the work you're doing is just to be clear I think it's extremely valuable and interesting independently of the fact that you're 19 but it's particularly interesting if you're 19 if that does that make sense?

No yeah that makes a lot of sense like I mean I kind of struggle with the same thing it's like yeah like this part of the apartment is like yeah like I guess I'm kind of known for this sort of you know how I've been as a child prodigy or whatever but then also like you know kind of want to also be known as you know this you know good AI researcher or a good yeah just a good researcher you know making you know yeah making a difference that way so but like I also appreciate the sort of background and a half right so it's like the sort of balance of you know yeah I guess who I am as a person like like yeah and how I represented it's like so I think there's a kind of a balance there where like yeah I definitely don't want to be pigeonholed it's just you know but like also yeah yeah I mean also and we'll talk about this more later but like I get the impression that you're very much a product of or a proud part of a family unit which has been you know very much a part of your path to this point you know and your sister is also doing amazing things and in a sense to kind of wipe away the fact you did all this at you know at a young age would almost be to ignore the amazing work and support that your family is provided does that yeah yeah I mean I think I think my parents kind of that's kind of the perspective that my parents have I think on this thing so there's also yeah I mean of course they've you know they've nailed a lot of sacrifices and they've put in a lot of work to help me reach where I am right now so and the same is true of course of mine for my sister so I think yeah you know they're also you know very proud of of the accomplished accomplishments that we've done it's to young age so yeah that's a that's a that's definitely a huge factor and I think yeah it's of course let's let's talk about your sister for a moment so yeah so yeah what's your sister's name and what's she doing and how does she and yeah tell me tell me about that too yeah my sister she my sister's Chiara Abraham she is a she's 16 years old and right now she's doing her master's at Indiana University in both the performance and so yeah she you know she's she's also kind of a job she's a job biology in her own right in terms of she's been singing since she was about like maybe like five years old and you know she she's gone with professional vocal training and you know she's sung in many different venues she's for example sung the national anthem at you know very like at the Giants game S of Johns and you know at various different locations and then she's sung at different concerts and like of course like Carnegie Hall and in there's like the there's this big music hall in Austria music behind it's like various halls that she's she's also sung and yeah she's she's a very good singer she's interested in opera singing so that's kind of what she's pursuing right now at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music it's like one of the the best music schools in America for especially for the sort of opera music so you must be very proud of your little sister Tanishka yeah yeah it could see I'm just talking on and on about her no that's great I love it I mean yeah I yeah of course I I met you guys and your parents when you came to San Francisco and I remember that was actually because Tiara was yeah looking at like where where to go to school I think you might have been looking at Berkeley as well at that time yeah at that time she was actually looking for her undergrad school so yeah that was in 2019 yeah and I remember saying to you guys like oh you know where should we meet and I was like oh I really like bubble tea should we go to bubble tea and I swear both of you guys to your eyes lit up with like oh we love bubble tea yeah yeah I mean we love the boba tea and it's like yeah we we really enjoy that it's funny actually I only started like we first had our like first boba tea like in 2018 or so like off right out of mine was like yeah we should go try it it was like and it's like amazing yeah so like a lot of times we look if we are traveling around and we see a bubble tea location we'll we'll give it a try I gotta admit I thought it was the weirdest sounding thing ever and I ignored it for a very long time yeah we're at tea with like tapioca that yeah balls yeah no not for me but it's fine because the tapioca balls are like the best part of it it's like oh yeah I like getting all the tapioca balls and like of course absolutely and just the fact you've got these awesome straws that are tapioca yeah it's great and you know generally bubble tea places also have extremely evil fried food options as well which is always always good so to be clear um yeah I mean for people that don't know uh I uh I'm a university professor that works in Tunisian field um very closely actually the Tunisian field um so not just AI and not just deep learning but specifically having done not just work in medical AI but quite a bit of work in microscopy so we um we chat nowadays what four days a week you know about a work we're doing which is super fun um and it's like one of the delightful things about the world that we're now in that we get to have this amazing you know collegial relationship despite the fact we we live in different parts of the world we're very different ages we're very different life stages we don't work for the same companies at all like I don't know I guess like maybe you've almost grown up with that or or does that strike you as kind of like amazing and unusual as well well yeah I don't know I guess I mean I think yeah part of it is just the power of technology and part of it is just me also like I'm just like always trying to reach out to people and try to interact with lots of people from different backgrounds so like that's kind of the thing that I enjoy so um and that would have been harder a few years ago you know when we didn't have that the accomplancing and yeah so but yeah I mean I think yeah I think yeah especially since the pandemic and all this video accomplancing has happened that has definitely opened up more opportunities for this sort of work yeah and of course like even the opportunity for remote jobs and things like that like I'm working part-time with this with this AI company and you know I'm obviously working remote like the company's technically based in UK but like the entire company like most of the company and like all the almost all the researchers are like in various different parts of the world and and that I don't I think they kind of came about because of you know um I guess it was like a lot of these AI communities kind of sprouted during this uh you know pandemic and so a lot of these kind of uh open source decentralized communities it only happened because of the pandemic and I think at that time a lot of us were bored and you know interested in like you know what could we do and so that that kind of led to this whole you know oh you know decentralized community happen these sorts of communities happening and now that that's become kind of the norm now which is yeah I think it's a great thing well I know for some people but I mean I think for a lot of people listening to this it wouldn't be very normal at all I mean for me it's like been normal for a long time my first company Fastmail was well you know my my school old school friend who I started with with it was local but everybody else was spread around the world and we had all just met over the internet that was I don't 1999 um we I'm trying to remember I guess we well a lot of the lot of us we never even really spoke directly over even Skype or anything it was all just text chat email that worked really well I've always yeah I've always liked being able to choose who I work with based on who's the best person to work with rather than who happens to live nearby you know yeah yeah the other thing I've noticed I at least for myself is like I find like you know I think asynchritists chatting or whatever it feels like sometimes it's easier to I don't know reach out to people and to like interact with the people and like I feel like yeah well it's not of course that's easier that they're just available you can just send them a message and like yeah but it's like also like I don't know I feel like like it gives you more I feel like I'm more open to be able to you know interact with people like this like otherwise I may may feel like you know I think especially with platforms like discord and things like that because like right emails I think the thing is like things like emails feel very like professional you kind of like have to be like you know you want it to be all professional but there's something like these sorts of platforms like discord and I guess there you know other different platforms like that it's like you can just like quickly send them a message I mean it is particularly discord right like that's I think yeah yeah I think it's particularly discord and let's so let's just clarify so so the way you and I interact with our little community you know is we have a kind of a discord text chat where we we kind of you know because we're all over the world literally you know Africa Europe Australia US different time zones so we say oh here's something I tried here's some pictures of it here's a link to the code whatever and then we have our you know whatever for four days a week video chat and I do think that video chat adds a lot as well like I feel like it's I don't know I really yeah I really like that lower latency communication channel as well yeah yeah I mean just to be clear like it's not just us doing discord but like a lot of these open source AI communities that plays discord and it's like um yeah like nowadays you'll see like cutting-edge research being shared in discord channels just like kind of like like it feels like now you know like I think it's normal but like when you take a step back you realize that's kind of absurd right like I mean not just read but developed so I mean let's talk okay so let's talk about I mean you were very very modest about you know this AI venture you're involved in so to be clear the AI venture is stability AI and it's not just some hokey little thing it's actually I don't know I would argue it's maybe the most cutting-edge exciting AI startup in the world um it's and you're not just working there part-time you are leading the medical AI group there um it's like just getting that out of the way you're um but yeah it's kind of like that stability AI a lot of it happens over discord because the people are yeah they're all over the world and there's constantly folks saying what experiment they're going to try running or the results they've just got or so forth yeah I mean do you want to talk more about yeah what what that how that works and what that feels like yeah sure yeah like I think so with stability AI and the research groups under stability AI they're mostly these sorts of uh communities that are effectively you know for the most part just discord servers I think now as the company is growing you know there may be some aspects of becoming a little bit more formal but for the most part these are like open discord servers where you know pretty much anybody can drop in and um and they can help out as they want of course there are some people who are going to be employed by stability AI but there are other people who are just you know volunteering sharing their expertise so oftentimes you'll just have you know people they're often academics right who are kind of like yeah it's not exactly volunteering it's more like actively collaborating with people who aren't necessarily at the same university so like there are people who are completely new uh well not completely new I mean they still have some you know they're taking classes or whatever um but they want to get their hands dirty in actual research and they're able to get involved and you know work on research projects but then there are also people who are actual AI researchers you know academics or maybe even sometimes even people from AI startups or AI companies um and they're also able to get involved and um and help out you know and lend their own expertise um so it's like you know a mix of different groups and I think it's good that we have a sort of mix of different groups because you have different perspectives that you can get as well and you know you know a very diverse set of perspectives which I think is very important for any sort of research project to be able to have that set of uh you know that sort of diversity um and I think that being open you know having a sort of open environment um through this sort of discord server really uh enables and fosters that kind of collaboration and diversity so like it seems to be working quite well um so there are a few um I mean I can talk a little bit about some of the research organizations there's in with your AI but let's let's come back to that later maybe yeah um because um yeah I'm actually you know I feel like having got a sense of like what you're working on now uh at a high level I'm actually I want to come back to that but first I want to I'm really keen to learn more about you Tanishk okay um and I think a good way to find out about people is you know to do a bit of a biography you know talk about your your the chronology of your life which I'm sure will have lots of interesting facets but yeah first of all maybe you can tell me a bit about the family that you come from you know uh I I believe you were born in the US but yeah I mean we're you know where were you born or where did your parents come from and what were they doing with their lives before you came on the scene yeah sure um so um you know I'm Indian my parents are um both Indian born in India and um then uh first my mom's background so my mom's background is in veterinary medicine um my mom did her uh degree in India and then um and then my dad's background my dad technically did uh bachelors in um in electrical engineering uh but then uh right after my dad uh left university he got hired to do more software engineering stuff however since then he's been working in in software he must have been very quite an early software engineer yeah um do you know what he's working on um yeah so this is like maybe late 18 sorry late 80s early 90s yeah late 80s probably um okay so not too early then early yeah um so I forget exactly which which part of India which part of India was was that um so yeah both of my parents are from Kerala which is like the southern states yeah yeah kind of the most south state of India um and so yeah um like my mom went to veterinary school over there and it's like one of the leading veterinary schools in the country um and actually my my grandparents my mom's parents are also like they're also veterinarians um uh yeah um and they're also you know really accomplished people um like my my grandmother is like she was like the first woman veterinary phd or something like that or yeah yeah she she was like I'm kind of also like a trailblazer and then my uh my yeah also my grandfather um was oh yeah yeah my grandmother like apparently she like discovered a new virus and like yeah she she's done a lot of I mean you know work as well in veterinary medicine and um and also my my grandfather also um like then like I think yeah at one point uh my grandfather and grandmother they worked in Nigeria and so my my um my mom and our family were living in Nigeria for a few years but they were like they were like in the government like one of the like kind of like the top of like veterinary medicine in the entire entire uh entire country and they had really um you know so they're very accomplished people in veterinary medicine um you know and and so my mom was also kind of you know working at veterinary medicine or you know studying veterinary medicine um and then so then my mom came to the US and um met my dad and got married and um then so my dad was working uh in software engineering for a bit um and he was working they were in upstate New York um which is like in Utica which is like like what brought them to what brought them to America oh well so my dad was actually uh we kind of was brought up in in America so like my dad like so my dad's family moved to America like when he was in like middle school or so uh so my dad so my dad was uh you know brought up actually in in America so my dad used to live in it sorry what um yeah what what prompted that move um i don't know exactly i think my so my grandma my my dad's mother or my grandmother she was working as a nurse in America um and yeah i guess yeah i guess for better opportunities uh yeah so they they moved to America um but then my mom only moved um after she completed her veterinary degree and um and then when she um came to America um she met my mom my dad and got married so um yeah and then so they were they were living in Utica which is like upstate New York really freezing cold weather uh then you know i think my dad's company i kind of i think at least i think that that facility shut down something like that so uh they were going they had to find a new place um and they were they were tired of the freezing cold weather so they were my dad managed to find a job here it remember yeah he found a job in in in Davis in California um and so that's near San Diego right oh that's near Sacramento so oh right i remember now yeah yeah so it's about inland from inland from San Francisco yeah it's about like in our northeast uh no yeah an hour northeast of San Francisco um and so yeah my my my dad found a job there in in Davis and and they found a house in exactly but well yeah they were personally living in an apartment and then they found a house in Sacramento so you know since then they've been in Sacramento so that's been about like 25 years or so something like that um so and my yeah well my dad has been working at yeah basically my dad's been working at this company for i guess i think this year was 26 years so yeah like 26 26 or 27 it's 26 years yeah 36 years um so what's your company for 26 years it's just like nowadays that is unheard of obviously especially in California and what is what is your earliest memory Tanishk my earliest memory um i mean i had like some really vague memories maybe like i don't know maybe like three or four years old like really vague memories but i think a lot of my earliest memories were well yeah i do remember like a little bit in preschool so i must have been four um so i do remember a little bit in preschool yeah tell me what do you remember about preschool oh well many of you know just like i guess playing playing around um like um i guess um i guess when my parents would pick me up from preschool um and just like i guess certain yes it's like very vague but still like i kind of remember it um yeah i think a lot of my memories are more more probably from the kindergarten onwards i think that's kind of where yeah yeah now okay so this is interesting so you went to preschool you went to kindergarten but i know in the end you um you did homeschooling right so when did that switch happen and and why yeah um so it needs like worth talking about like when maybe my parents realized i was i guess different or special or whatever um and how that kind of resulted like and how that affected my education um but like so like my parents realized i was different like from very early on i guess maybe you know when i was a few months old um because like for example my my mom would like test my comprehension so like for example reading picture books or like yeah showing picture books to me and everything's like that and my mom would like ask questions and stuff and i was able to like you know point at things and he kind of responds so like my mom was like yeah i'm not sure if this is normal for like someone who's only a few months old um and i guess it was i guess yeah it is kind of a little bit yeah it's interesting she figured out it's not you know because like um to me as a parent my daughter who's seven sounds like she's at a very similar level to where you were when you were seven which is like you were doing some college courses and my daughter Claire's also doing some college courses and so like i would say she's you know her academic progress recently has been unusual but i didn't neither me or my wife saw that at all early on and i have no idea that's if that's because she wasn't doing anything exceptional or just we had no idea what was normal um so it's interesting that your parents are able to recognize that it was it was unusual because as a parent you don't actually ask anything to compare to at least that's my experience yeah that's true like i think i think my dad was a little bit more like hesitant was like i don't know like you know all parents think their children are special right it's like so i think my dad was a little bit hesitant at first uh but my mom was like more convinced like yeah maybe there's something different and like so yeah and then eventually like so first of all like my mom was like doing her phd and and yeah my mom did like 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 my mom moved to to Sacramento and Davis uh you know my mom was able to do some uh studies there but like my mom was in her the middle of her phd um in veterinary studies yeah well it was technically like comparative pathology or something like that but yeah it was um yeah um but yes my mom was doing for phd when she was pregnant with me so originally the plan was just to take a few months off or like a year off or something like that and go back uh to completing the phd but then i think when my mom realized uh well maybe there's something special about about me or something different about me um that my mom decided to actually quit quit the phd and and become a a stay-at-home mom just to just to be able to support me and you know make sure i get the support that i need so i mean that's not like a really bold thing to do like i mean obviously selfless but like parents are expected to be selfless you know like that's you know um but yeah bold in the sense that like speaking as a parent from you know as soon as our daughter could go to a normal school which was rather delayed because of covid that covid would have been in the first year and all the schools were closed in san francisco we sent her to a normal school because that's what you do you know and it wasn't until we had like i don't know maybe it sounds really slow but it was like basically a year of realizing things like it didn't go terribly she was happy but it didn't go great and she never she definitely never learned anything and her only comments about the classes were that they were boring yeah yeah it was it was really a year of like not great progress that we finally thought okay maybe this is not the best environment for her so i mean yeah your mom yeah she really took a bold step very very early it's amazing yeah yeah it is kind of amazing because of course yeah like i think also you know my mom did definitely did have great career opportunities waiting waiting for her if you know if that was something my mom wanted to pursue but instead my mom decided instead to to focus on on me at the time and of course my sister later on so yeah it is definitely a huge sacrifice on on her yeah but also a huge amount of self-confidence right because yeah it's hard as a parent i find it hard as a parent to do things that are like totally different to what everybody else in the community is doing because there's always for me the second guessing of like oh i don't like i don't want to do weird things and make my child weird and like not give them the best opportunities and so there's always this very natural draw towards like just doing what everybody else is doing the basis system can't be that bad so yeah i mean she had a lot of self-confidence to do something that is yeah it's unusual yeah yeah yeah that's that that is that's true yeah um and of course yeah i mean of course it's not just my mom of course my my dad also was after some point no my dad was also quite convinced too so yeah you know together as a as a family um and so initially did your mom have to convince your dad is that i'm you're understanding that i'm not entirely sure but like i i mean i've heard from my you know i've heard from them like yeah originally you know my dad was like maybe you know all parents all parents think they're their children are special maybe not necessarily but i think you know after maybe after a bit maybe my my dad i think you know of course they they did their own research in terms of like child development and things like that at that young age and i think from that point onwards and then also eventually this was like later on i mean wait that's i mean that's interesting that's already interesting because i mean it may sound like an obvious thing to do is to research child development and i certainly did a lot of research into child development but very few parents i've spoken to actually spent time researching child development you're like uh that's that's interesting i got what do you yeah what do you know about that what did what did they uh-huh what did they do a lot about that to be honest um um i think i think yeah i think they they did like thankfully of course we should all you know with the internet you know there were already some resources available and then i think they may have talked to one or two people i'm not entirely sure honestly but then event i think eventually then they decided finally to do an iq test with me this was like when i was three or four years old so this was like a little bit later on but they yeah i think they just kind of wanted to like yeah but like my mom was like just doing this just to yeah our daughter didn't get one until she was six and it was only because her school told us they should do it and we're like uh why bother doing that you know but it actually looks really helpful yeah it's not like my mom needed that like to to be certain like i think it's more like also like certain so like for example we have like wanted to i think my mom wanted to get me into mensa at the time because my mom thought okay they might provide some you know useful resources and help with things honestly and so don't put right i mean you know so my mom had some high hopes about that so for that like that was maybe one of the reasons i think that my mom got like it just because they require those sorts of things uh but so like never just like yeah but so i mean of course that like definitely you know showed that i was uh you know confidently show you know yeah i mean let's talk about that for a moment but like so yeah sorry let's talk about that for a moment because it's like it's it's really something that really resonates for me as i say as a parent like so yeah for for our daughter her assessment showed she's in i don't know the top point oh oh i don't know how many ohs one percent yeah um and i kind of what felt like or wanted to feel like that doesn't matter i mean she was very um well adapted at school she had a lot of friends people liked her you know one level everything seemed fine but at another level she was spending hours every day sitting in a classroom where she was learning nothing at all and she was just basically practicing learning how to zone out and always be right which i think is terrible psychologically to always be right you know because you need to fear being wrong um and you know the school had a gifted program that like is for the top 10 of students and it's like well what about the top 10 percent of the top 10 percent you know over there you're like they are different you know you like those those children have different needs not necessarily socially but bring you know to be challenged and to be you know what counts as compelling content so yeah i definitely feel like it's mattered for us in a way that i didn't at all expect almost comfortable with yeah i mean yeah 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 like were that concerned about it or like you know they couldn't yeah it was just more i guess yeah for these sorts of things um and um yeah in terms of like i mean that's not something to be proud of but it's something that's definitely impacted yeah yeah exactly you know how you have lived your life and how your parents instructed your life so like clearly it it matters in some way right yeah i guess it matters but like yeah yeah yeah he's yeah that's right um but in terms of like yeah what my parents were like i guess yeah going back to like when i started going to like preschool and kindergarten like they wanted to of course challenge me um of course like socially you know i was they wanted to of course give that social development to me as well like you don't make sure have that social development so you know they try their best you know to to set up something special with the school so i think you know as much like at kindergarten um and then i think also so like in kindergarten i think also second grade so i actually skipped first grade i went to second grade so i think in those two grades like i was doing like this sort of like i would only go maybe two or three times a week um and that was mainly just for the social aspect right because i'm not like learning anything new yeah because uh it's amazing how similar that is to Claire she skipped prep once she took her to school and jumped into first grade although she was doing but then for math they put her in fifth grade isn't yeah you yeah yeah i definitely felt as parent like oh i don't want her to miss out on social development yeah so then yeah that's what they yeah that's what my parents started to do to still give me that social development so you know i still have five to have friends at school and um but then they you know of course at home i was studying my own at my own level um and then i would i would participate in some of those gifted programs like there was like a reading program where i would be again reading it like you know fifth grade level that i'm reading at when i'm in kindergarten uh similar with um you know math and and then also i think like when i was in second grade my parents were able to stop at the school something where like i would be i would go to like the eighth grade class for science or something like that um was like participating in a few of their activities and stuff um so i'll tell you the challenge we faced with that which i'm guessing you might have seen something similar your parents might have seen something similar which is um you can put you know you can accelerate a kid to a higher class you know but it's not that that kid is like statically more advanced by x amount it's a you know pick things up quicker and so like at least with Claire she was put into grade five you know when she was meant to be in for bath when she meant to be in grade prep and for a month that was cool and she was interested and after a month she was bored again and like we didn't we didn't find any yeah these programs tend to be like kind of a static amount of enrichment on top of what they'd otherwise be doing but it doesn't seem to account for this continuous acceleration where they're doing like a year's worth of learning every month or two like that doesn't seem to fit very well with any of these programs yeah well the thing was like my parents tried to like do something very special and like very cheap like something catered specifically to me and they try to work that out with the school for a long time yeah it had a lot of meetings with you know people at the school but then eventually then the school was very at a certain point they they kind of weren't as flexible and they just kind of did not want to you know support whatever my parents thought would be best for me yeah but it sounds like that made quite an effort um they they kind of say the same thing about our child school like they're quite after yeah and they need some effort but again that was after a lot of my parents pushing them right like this was like my parents put a lot of work you know you know they had several meetings i mean i still kind of lately remember like some of the meetings but they were like really like trying to you know argue it out with some of the yeah the the the folks at the school yeah i mean that's such a common story i've heard so many parents say yeah they like the advocacy is exhausting and demanding yeah it is exhausting yeah i i remember that being the case for my parents and the only reason my my parents kept me in the school was because of the social aspect of things but then as i so like the thing was like with the second grade that the teacher was very supportive so that really helped then as advantage of third grade the teacher was not at all supportive yeah um and then some teachers almost seem to be antagonistic or threatened or something like some teachers really seem to react negatively yes yes i think they do feel kind of threatened that like they're maybe they're not like they're not the ones who are teaching or like you know or like you know maybe they feel like yeah threading like oh this this is like a know-it-all kind of kid or something like that i don't know yeah i mean we had something like that with claire there was you know that her school on the whole was trying really hard and they there was actually a gifted program in high school that they put her into when math was too boring and yeah it's like oh this is cool you know like two two years of high school math in one year and maybe challenging and then there was a change of headmaster at the high school and it was weird the way he took this like personal interest in like getting rid of our daughter out of school it's like yeah he sent us this email and like and like send an email to the primary school and yeah he just seemed really offended by the fact that there was a young child studying math in his school in a way that i just i didn't understand how he was thinking about it yeah yeah some people are like that and i think that's what happened in third grade and yeah like like the second grade teacher was very supportive and i think some of the folks at the school were supportive but then i was going into third grade i think they're also some of the the staff also changed and those folks were yeah less supportive they felt threatened and then also i don't know how you know what it is but like the you know the students also were very antagonistic towards me at that point and i was getting wow already at that age yeah yeah i was getting bullied i i mean i kind of remember like there were times where like for example some of the students would like steal my supplies um then some of them would like try to like like they would quiz me like mental math 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 of person who's like actually pretty bad at mental math to be honest i think that's like one of the things i'm not very good at so like you know you know that's that was you know not a very good yeah it was very i guess yeah the entire environment kind of became toxic um and i was not enjoying going to school like before i used to like enjoy going to school you know i had some friends you know i thought it was you know it was just for me to have fun i mean third graders must be learning this attitude from somewhere right like yeah exactly yeah that's where that i think i think part of it does come from both you know the parents maybe you know there's some aspect from the parents again from the staff the teacher i don't know uh but i think there there's of course some aspect where it's like yeah they are learning it you know from from yeah other figures yeah so at that point like i was not enjoying going to school yeah no okay i can i can get why your mom did homeschooling at that point because yeah sounds like this is not working out at all exactly i mean they tried their best to get it to work but if it just didn't work so they were like yeah we're we're gonna take him out of school and and homeschool him so let me just just let me just take a diversion for a moment then just because i've been as i said studying a lot of the research around education and child development and um as i expect you know the the reality is that on pretty much only any socialization or social measure homeschooling kids on average come out ahead of kids that go to normal schools um so you know that's that that that's the other thing when when we were like oh maybe we should homeschool Claire it's like oh no what if she turns out to be some kind of weird freakoid who doesn't know how to deal with people that's not what the research shows at all yeah um and indeed you don't seem to have come out as a weird freakoid freakoid you can't deal with people or if at least if you are you seem to be able to hide it very well yeah i mean that man definitely been like the complaint everyone says it's like you look at like like that's like what like especially when i was younger that was like one of the you know questions like everyone had one about his social skills and like like you see like any interviews you look at like the comments on any of these interviews like i mean obviously i don't i'm not affected by any of these comments or anything but it's just kind of funny to just see like everyone's like what about his social skills i'm like you don't need to worry about that but yeah um i think like so when i was yeah when i was younger of course they uh my parents had given me different opportunities for social skills so like i used to i used to go to uh the san francisco boys chorus i was in in the chorus for quite some time um so i had you know you know that was that was happening while i was homeschooled um and so that i got you know that was one opportunity for me to socialize but then i think it's also like i guess i didn't have any issue like like as i started a college and stuff like that i didn't have much issue socializing with people who are like twice my age or three times my age right right and like why you know a couple of questions like why would we assume that the best people to socialize with the people whether you're saying chronological age yeah that doesn't happen in adulthood we're all kinds of different ages and and b why would socializing well with seven-year-olds be an important skill within year 18 like yeah there's a lot of assumptions in there that don't make sense to me and so like yeah homeschooling kids generally seem to have a much wider age group or diversity of people they hang out with rather than people yeah exactly their exact chronological age and go to a school with the same religious profile or whatever as you know everybody else yeah yeah that's definitely an important point like when i went to so i started out in a community college which is like 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 it's not only like students in so sometimes students in high school will be taking college classes there sometimes after high school they'll spend a three two years in this college and then go to complete their remaining two years at a regular university then also there's a lot of students who are coming back for like continuing education and things like that so a community college has a very diverse group of people you know you have students who are like high schoolers uh you know so they're and how long earlier when you were starting to go to this community college i was seven years old seven okay yeah so then they were you know standing through like in the early teens all the way up to people who may be in their 60s 70s uh so you have this very diverse group of people very diverse ages um and so can i just ask something about this just sorry to interrupt i just wanted to make my guess would be tell me if i'm wrong all right that you wouldn't have had the same problems with bullying as a seven-year-old at a community college because the other kids would have probably seen you more as like a adorable little kid rather than a threat or something and i would imagine they were on the whole pretty pretty nice to you was that yeah um for the most part the students were pretty nice to me um i think i think um also like it was more like i think yeah a lot of students just thought um i think you know you know i'm the kind of student who's very engaged in the class and you know studying very well and so they also thought of me kind of just as a probably good student in the class and you know interacted with me accordingly um occasionally you'll have students who did feel maybe a little bit threatened that happens occasionally um but you know i try to avoid that as much as possible but for the most part yeah something less i got um over bullying like i had in in third grade or whatever yeah i i got a bit of an insight into your experience as a seven-year-old because we're lucky enough that you have a recording of you as a nine-year-old describing that experience um and a ted x talk and i think one of the things that really struck me or there's a couple of things that really struck me but one was how much again advocacy was required by your parents to get somebody to agree to teach you yeah yeah um yeah can you talk a bit about i mean obviously it wasn't you doing that but like what's your memory of that or what have you yeah about that from your parents and what what what what was it like to get because okay just to be clear my understanding is as a seven-year-old you were a very good college student like you got a's and top marks and so yeah maybe talk a bit about like yeah what kind of results were you getting but then what was the experience like of actually getting to attend these classes right yeah so again at that point it was again my parents are trying to challenge me and you know keep me uh you know yeah you know try to academically challenge me um so they thought you know at the time i was interested like in of course i was already kind of interested in science you know i was interested in like paleontology astronomy so they were looking for and like you know i was dinosaurs in space are always good kids things yeah absolutely there's still like an aspect of me being a regular seven-year-old who loves like dinosaurs in space well of course that's the thing right our daughter's the same she's such a regular seven-year-old she likes fairies and unicorns and spaceships and imaginary animal friends yeah yeah yeah i mean i think yeah the difference is like i took it a lot farther than like a regular you know seven-year-old like i was like really stunning everything about dinosaurs and everything about the maze our daughter has watched the entire professor dave astronomy video series like i don't know five times and she's always quizzing me about main sequence stars and brown clouds and i'm just like slightly picking things up but yeah yeah exactly yeah yeah i remember some of that from my astronomy days yeah um so yeah i think i think so at the point was like the point was like i had gone through a lot of the material that is available for kids my age even like you know kids ordered me in terms of like reading books about dinosaurs and things like that you know even starting to maybe get into a couple of papers and things like that so they figured you know that a better way to potentially challenge me was you know going to college and i mean i had also asked them about this too this is something that i had myself asked about um you know this is something that i was you know interested in as well um and so you know in fact at first they didn't take me very seriously oh this kid wants to go to college that doesn't make any sense but are they being your parents or they being yeah yeah my parents like even they were like at first uh i don't know like sure you're advanced but you know you're still seven i guess at the time i'd asked i was maybe like five or six and they were like yeah that's real a bit weird i guess yeah it is kind of weird so um but then i think they they noticed like you know i'm still like kind of study this as much as possible and i you know college would be a good opportunity for me to you know pursue this further and you know i was asking them relentlessly about this um and so eventually the again contacting some professors as you can imagine most of the professors said no they managed to find one professor who uh said said yes um and she agreed to have my mom as a student in the class and then i just would be part of the you know just you know going along with my with my mom so i wasn't actually at that point an official student i was just with my mom was a student and then uh he would so i was just sitting in the class then when it came to like things like quizzes and exams just for fun he would give me those quizzes and exams and i would take them and you know i was getting eight grades in all the quizzes and exams now so he was very amazed by that i don't know these topics are largely like kind of more like rote learning really aren't they often yeah so this was a geology class so you know there was an aspect of it that is rote learning but also like i think there's still some aspect of it that's understanding you know the geological processes and how how how they work and how they interact but for yeah there's a lot i guess my point being like i find that for a lot of the stuff Claire's doing i actually feel like a lot of seven year olds could do it because you know it's it's you know like i mentioned to you the other day she's doing biochemistry at the moment and yeah it's largely college level material some of it's actually beyond college level material like chirality and stuff i think normally you tend to do post-grad is my understanding um and yeah she had to like learn the amino acids which yeah i think you know she learned some fast i didn't know this stuff either and she learned them faster than me but it's not surprising because you know the young brain does learn things faster than an adult so like i do think that this might also be partly a general thing as kids can perhaps learn more than we expect yeah that's probably true i think i don't yeah i don't know like you know what kind of skills are required at these different ages or like or you know develop at different ages there may be some skills but yeah i mean of course a lot of the memorization is possible at a young age probably yeah maybe i can come back to this topic i'm really interested in talking about it more because um i don't know i just think it's really fascinating but yeah i don't i also don't want to interrupt your your story so yeah yeah do go into about your college experience yeah and so yeah i was like yeah basically i was in this geology class and um you know taking a lot of the exams and quizzes and he was you know very uh impressed and uh i think so you weren't really officially there you it was really like your mum's doing it and get old she has to babysit the kid basically yeah basically like um i guess i was presented but yeah yeah but it was actually secretly it was for you yes exactly yeah um so then i think so at that point and then she he was also kind of helping out and becoming an advocate for me as well in terms of like okay this is a kid who i think can potentially join this college and take some college classes what was his person's name um stephen stirling he was a he was a geology professor um and yeah so i think he's retired now but yeah he uh so yeah he he he really was helpful in terms of like talking with the the college staff and helping to convince them but even then they of course the college staff were still not that convinced they were like they kind of they were like you have to do well in these classes otherwise we will not let you continue so like i think the expectation was like getting an a basically in the classes is that a higher bar than other students would have had or probably i mean probably yeah um i think so yeah so for a while that's kind of what was happening and then also they limited me to only taking two classes per first semester so i was only taking two classes per semester um and so and then basically every single semester there was a whole process like i had to go and meet the dean and get permission from the dean and it was a whole process um and it was like a very special uh situation but eventually like so like i wanted to take more classes and progress faster yeah i mean two classes on the semester is not a lot not yeah it's not particularly um yeah it's not particularly engaging i guess um so the so the idea was then um i would graduate my school so then then i would be regular college student so this is around the age of nine or ten then i i managed so luckily in california they do have this option to like um take a a standardized test and test out of high school but you can only take it if you are in 10th grade so they they they we have to set it up i wonder why these limitations exist where they came from because somebody obviously proactively decided you should create this gate it's it's interesting and i think it's again like they think like oh you have to be you have to go through a certain amount to to have that development that they deem necessary i guess um i think that's what it is um but so yeah they had to like we need to like set it up in a specific way such that i was like officially technically in chance grade and then eventually i was able to take that test yeah we we had to yeah there was a way that we we had to like yeah set it up with some school or something yeah it was it was another whole process um and then eventually i was able to test out um and um and so that's some specific californian thing that yeah yeah i think the californian are you effectively basically just doing the year 12 exams and the normal year 12 exams and it's not just i don't think it was a normal year 12 exam it was specific towards testing out like i think the idea is like so like they want they'd be allowed for like grade 10 and 11 students to test out of of high school actually so this is a test for these sorts of grade 11 and grade 10 and 11 students um so it's kind of more uh catered towards that particular i think there's a separate test for actually for regular grade 12 testing out uh but they but luckily like i mean that's kind of still like a benefit of california like i don't know if other states actually have this sort of uh before yeah i'll ask you about something which is um i wonder if you had to deal with this at that time you know but um a term that's very often used by psychologists in the field of like you know more advanced kids or whatever is um asynchronous development and so asynchronous development refers to the idea that some kids you know develop surprisingly quickly in certain areas but not in others you know so for example for kids that who would often be described as gifted which is not a term i love but i guess it's a term that's reasonably when i'm stored the asynchronous development often is like okay their handwriting's crappy because they're not particularly physically capable their understanding of you know complex social political etc situations as you might come across in like a shakespeare play don't really exist you know but they have maybe very good understanding of spatial reasoning or or abstract manipulation or whatever um so yeah so in in our life that's that asynchronous development is the big challenge because like i don't feel like i would want player doing a you know year 12 level english exam where she was expecting to read you know books like othello or something um because they're just not age appropriate they you know like reading comprehension okay should get it should be fine but like she's she's a little kid no yeah um and she certainly couldn't do the handwriting necessary for a normal like three-hour exam or something so yeah did you have to deal with those kinds of things or or with the california and stuff mainly more like modable choice analogy tests and stuff so the california test was yeah more more like that i think there's maybe an essay or something like that but for the most part it was um mostly they're just testing your knowledge and things like that um but overall of course my parents are what were careful about what was age appropriate in terms of like classes and things like that um like even like for example english classes you know they would review the books you know making sure they're age appropriate you know certain you know there were certain classes like um yeah they're different classes that you know my parents you know they would talk to the professors and also just clarify what the professor is if there's anything to be you know to be careful about and you know like maybe there are times when like the professors would show something and you know i would step out of the class for a bit while they're showing something that maybe wasn't wasn't the most age appropriate so like they you know there was definitely that aspect uh in terms of like what was age appropriate for me at the time um but apart from that like again of course like handwriting you know was also something i like struggle with um but i think that was more like i do have like some sort of like issue with with my hand in terms of like i don't know yeah i have some you know issue like especially for writing very long periods of time um i i much prefer typing and things like that i mean yeah i've absolutely yeah it's always the same and we actually got out we got our daughter typing we got our daughter typing like when she was five i guess and it's been such a great skill for her to have because there's so many things she can now do despite her asynchronous development because yeah little little kids can type that was not necessarily an asynchronous thing it was just more like i think i do have like i tend to have like pain or something like this i don't know some it's more like i think um yeah i don't think that was like a development thing that's just kind of something with my body or whatever uh so how did you throw that essay um well i don't know like i don't know if i had i thought there's something that didn't get like accommodations and things like that in terms of like specifically uh for this sort of issue i don't know if i had or not my child is sure but australia there's like a specific list of things that count as accommodations you know and they're but and like they're disabilities you know and you have to be able to show that it's like a due to an illness so although like having tiny seven-year-old hands is a disability but at least in australia it doesn't count as one because it's not due to an illness okay oh interesting okay well it was yeah and over here they counted as a disability actually when i when i have it that makes much more sense yeah um but like overall like apart from like age-appropriate stuff like you know being careful about that for the most part like and yeah i guess what they have thing is really not asynchronous development but apart from that for the most part like in terms of development like for example i was oh like my attempt was like 11 i think or so like there was one i took an english class and we went over like i think it was the tempest or something like that so i was like already like reading like shakespeare plays or whatever um and i didn't have that much issue with those sorts of things yeah i mean the tempest is not a particularly i don't know like yeah it feels like a pretty still very dense accessible story but yeah like rell and juliet or something or if hello or something might be hmm tougher i think but yeah i don't remember anything yeah go ahead what about um what about math so um yeah like math is needed for a lot of college level you know um stem stuff yeah well not just stem but also social sciences as well um so yeah what were you doing about that we used you know studying more advanced math and like calculus and trig and stuff and what you know was that like mainly your mom teaching you or how did math work um so like when i was younger um like again six or seven years old it was mostly my dad my dad is the more i mean my dad is a software engineer and of course he's he's more you know engineering background he's he was able to teach the the math aspect of things um so i'm yeah my dad would help me out then teach me and they were like different programs that you know i was i was going through in terms of um you know learning you know i think yes at the age of five i was doing again like fifth grade sixth grade math but then i would continually progress i think by nine or ten i think by nine i started like starting dibbling you know dabbling and and calculus and that kind of level stuff but then like i started taking classes like it's like even online classes and stuff and like pre-calculus and i think maybe even some con academy videos things like that so i was like so then by by 10 which is when i also graduated high school i went into um yeah i started taking i took a proper calculus class i mean i already studied like calculus on my own stuff like that but then i actually took a proper college so what do you say on your own that would be largely con academy um yeah like i think there was a maybe a book that i was reading and then there was like um there's like a corsera course i think yeah there was like this really nice corsera course that i took on single variable and multi-variable calculus things like that um so i think it was mostly single variable calculus so yeah i was mostly mostly taking just like yeah resources online things like that uh and so um 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 it's like me like i have a goal in mind right so like i remember like when i was saying trigonometry i think this may have been the time of like the transit of venus or whatever and there was like the whole thing you can calculate the distance of you know the earth to the sun based on like you know the you know the time it takes for the transit and stuff like that and it's like there's a lot of trigonometry involved and so i was like studying trigonometry to understand that kind of stuff and then i was studying like calculus also to better understand some physics stuff so a lot of it is me i mean that's my like constant goal with teaching my daughter is trying to find those things where she can get to do it in context because honestly like she so i for math i teach her and one other kid her best friend and the best friend is totally happy to learn math for its own sake like he just has so much joy in being like oh i now know a new thing yeah and my daughter's not like that at all she just doesn't care until it's got a reason so we do a lot of um art of problem solving did that exist when you were 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 basically kind of like designed as a kind of math olympiad prep but it's like 12 years worth of math olympiad prep if you know what i mean so it's like teaching the entire primary and high school curriculum right but on the assumption that the kids studying it are really interested in solving challenging problems and thinking carefully about them and they're going to continue all the way through that's done in a very thoughtful way and um it's a great program but yeah my daughter's really not interested her friend loves it and then the other day i was like okay well you know for some reason oh that's right i was having trouble setting up a factorial computer game server for them and they were like why isn't it working and i'm saying like well it works if i put in an ip address but not a dns name for some reason and then and then players just like what exactly is an ip address so why you know i was like okay all right stop everything this class is going to be about you know ip addresses and we're going to have to do binary masks and we're going to do octets and uh you know and now she's totally into it and like at every step she's just like wait how on earth do multiple things go over the same wire like oh okay well that's multiplexing it's like what exactly is multiplexing how does that work and like oh well okay let's come up with a little simple algorithm that we could use for multiplexing and yeah with context she's just yeah all over it and without context she just that's okay so the interesting thing is like now i feel like i'm like before i came to math yeah i was more like i need to have an application or something to motivate that now i feel like i'm kind of interested in not just for the sake of it sometimes so i don't know like at a certain point i think that in a certain age i guess that that maybe changed i don't know so i am slightly getting there i wouldn't say i think i'm still not quite there like i had to have math books now that i purchased for the enjoyment but they're generally were like you know using apl or they're like you know different perspectives on math or whatever i you know i'm not somebody who could just study a real analysis textbook and find that yeah a worthy thing to spend my time on yeah so yeah so i guess then i guess so yeah basically i was studying calculus and then uh but i still check out of like an official calculus college course and went through the calculus curriculum or the math curriculum at college so that included calculus one, calculus two, calculus three, then um i think what else then as i was finishing up at community college i took linear algebra and um yeah i took linear algebra and then in university i you know where i transferred over to the four-year university i took a differential equations class um and that was it in terms of like my yeah it just turned out to be very useful since we're spending so much time doing differential equations nowadays exactly yeah i mean funny there's so much stuff that i remember like in the world of math at school or university or whatever starting basically from trigonometry where you know we'd ask the teacher like what's this for and the teacher could never answer the question of like what's trigonometry for or what's differential calculus for or what and now yeah these things are everywhere like i you know use trigonometry all the time i'm and i'm like how do you do anything without trigonometry or without calculus but i think a lot of teachers just don't have that real world experience as engineers or scientists so that they genuinely don't know how to answer the question i think well it's going to be on exam yeah well yeah that's so like some of my classes did that was some of the classes really nice in terms of like you know providing those sorts of examples or like you know sometimes in the calculus textbooks they would provide you know actual examples of where these sorts of things would be used and i remember in my differential equations class uh the professor would start every lecture with like an example of you know the topic that we're talking about now like maybe it's a certain class of differential equations that we're talking about how was that how you know examples of the use of that in the actual world and so that's really really helpful like really in terms of motivating why these sorts of concepts that's really rare yeah it is rare he's actually he's a really great professor actually and so who's that sorry uh my differential equations professor yeah what's their name oh uh villium tabernet he's at uc davis yeah yeah um i just want to come back to khan academy as well not just khan academy but like i've asked you previously when we've chatted about online resources and you've mentioned you use things like time for learning and khan academy did you find that that stuff you did on like khan academy or whatever like was was useful in preparing you to take stuff like calculus one and things like that um i think it helped like i never been doing like especially like geometry i think i'll explain some algebra and geometry i mean i i learned the concepts so i don't how long so i did the job definitely definitely did his job and so i also learned some i think it did some chemistry like i used to do a lot of yeah i i think there was a time in i'm used to like i think a nice thing about like these like khan academy and these sorts of lectures and stuff it's like it's very easy to to like devour a lot in a lot of a lot of content right and it's like just like watch video after video and like and you're just learning all of it and and so that that really helps and then i think nowadays they also have like quizzes and stuff and i don't know if there were quizzes back then i mean taking some of these quizzes and stuff that also was helpful by the way i um your recommendation of trying out time for learning was not so accessible i tried it unfair and afterwards i was like how was that fair what do you think and she just goes i think it's stupid but she never had strong opinions like that about stuff so i was like oh okay because like it's like i don't know i might have i might have picked bad examples i picked the middle school stem stuff or whatever okay having said that we have since that time found some much more engaging youtube videos from crash course and the sisters that actually are pretty terrific and i'm learning yeah crash course is really really nice as well like i remember i mean i think i remember watching a lot of crash course videos i wish they had quizzes though like we always put everything we try to put everything into anki cards you know like most learning cards um which for math i kind of do it for them because no one remembers anything unless it's in anki card you know so yeah i wish there was like something like yeah crash course plus hmm anki cards for each lesson or something that would be amazing yeah um so okay so like i want to come back to your youtube talk your it's not youtube your tennis talk um so yeah as i said you know one thing that i've you know noticed very much was the struggles that you and your parents had in just getting somebody to agree to teach you like yeah i am an enthusiastic child who wants to learn yeah go to hell you're not old enough and then the second was the end of your talk was kind of like a plea to be accepted as you know a normal kid who isn't being forced to do things by a tiger mom and who just enjoys learning and like and we just actually all agree that's okay and i don't have to be demonized for that like these are not your words but i i almost felt like that's what you were kind of saying and yeah i wanted to hear about like what was driving that because i mean it sounds like even your parents might have been getting a bit like hassled in some way or like those assumptions that you were that they were driving you oh and like i remember you like showed pictures of like being outside and having parties and you're kind of like i don't just spend all my time indoors studying math you know yeah yeah so what what what happened is this some kind of like prejudice that you were like dealing with or you know what you do there is definitely like the sort of prejudice that or like the sort of assumption that yeah my my parents are pushing me or something like this uh could you give some examples of like yeah stuff that happened like that you remember and how that and how you felt at the time well i i guess not just yeah not just even my parents but like you hear often like a lot of comments are like you know and people are telling me straight to my face like you there's no need to hurry you know it's like like as if like this is something that i'm hurrying or anything like this is just me wanting to do what i want to do uh and it's like there's no need to hurry you know you can slow down those sorts of comments so there's that aspect of things from it's like kind of like from from teachers or friends of your family or what yeah i mean i think it's it's a combination of yeah like people who i you know even people who i meet for the first time sometimes they might say that you'll see it uh yeah sometimes teachers may say that sometimes and of course you know you'll see comments of course again you know i of course don't not like these sorts of comments i take your part or anything but it's just interesting to to see these sorts of like you know either the comments that i get from people in person or even the comments you see on the line must have been impacting you though like that you decided in this talk to like i think it's make this case i want to yeah i want to clear clear the air i guess right it's just like um certainly yeah i mean it doesn't like i'm not like saddened by it or anything like that it doesn't like you know affect me in that way i know like when people like read sometimes people read things like youtube comments or comments like that and they get really affected by it it doesn't it's not like that sort of effect it was just more like you know people and people are saying like yeah their parents must be pushing them more like you know you get like things like you know stereotypes about indian parents and things like that too right and it's like oh yeah bit of casual racism yeah yeah you know there's a bit of racism that goes in there too and it's like none of that is you know actually the reality in fact i think so let's talk about the reality so okay so you don't feel like you were in a hurry or you weren't being pushed to be in a hurry so like yeah what what was going on for you what were you trying to what were you trying to get out of your life i guess or get out of each day or how you know what were your priorities or interests i guess part of it is just like not being bored um like and um yeah were you bored sometimes sorry were you bored sometimes um i mean certainly when i was you know the younger like um i think definitely you know in the sort of elementary school and stuff like that it was definitely bored you know that was definitely a situation i remember Atlantic and you know sometimes they'll like give me tests and stuff and i'm sure i should pretty quickly i'm just sitting at the table doing nothing um so it was like um i have a feeling like being extremely bored for long periods of time as a very young kid with absolutely no way to avoid it could be very damaging i don't i don't have any data to back that up but it just feels like i feel like i've seen it you know there i mean there's certain well okay no that's not true there is some data to back it up i mean in a sense i don't know if you've seen the great research from Rurika Gross who's an Australian academic and unfortunately she recently passed away but she's one of the very few people that has done multi-decade longitudinal studies have we've found they gifted you know as they're called kids and kids who are left in their chronological age group class at school on average are in the bottom five percentile when it comes to social outcomes like they do very badly they tend to suffer depression at very high levels they tend to have very few friends kids the kids that are accelerated in by three or more grades on average are in i can't remember exactly i think it might be the top decile so maybe the top 10 of exactly the same metrics so like that that i mean i'm sure it's not just boredom but that certainly seems to align with the idea that leaving kids in an environment where they're bored just to keep them around kids of the same chronological age might be a bad idea yeah yeah um yeah i guess it's like this part of me that always like wants to do something like right like or like wants to um learn something wants to i guess we would do research like actually that was another thing like i think that was another thing like when i when i was in community college like this like it's always an aspect of really like always looking at what's you know what's what's the goal to reach right you know what is the um so i'm a very goal-oriented person so i don't know yeah like like you know that's a community college it's like okay i didn't what do i need to do to transfer to a four-year college but for university and especially at that time kind of my motivation was like the four young universities are like the best place to do research and i was like at that point like in community college i started getting into like okay like yeah i want to do some cutting-edge research now but like those opportunities aren't really available at community colleges so that was my next goal it's like let's go to four-year universities and then there'll be opportunity for me to do research and that and the four-year university i'm like okay now let's still i want to get to a phd so you know i can do even more research and uh and um so you had a strong sense of where you wanted to be you wanted to be doing cutting-edge research and there's there is a sequence of steps that have to be completed before exactly you can do that and of course i this is another thing like maybe this is something maybe worth touching on is like i know there you know the truth is like the sort of i guess path i've taken is still kind of conventional in a way right like i've still gone through like a four-year university and then a phd which i was gonna say i mean you're not like you haven't been in a hurry at all like it's been 12 years from when you started college when you're finishing your phd which is actually kind of slow yeah yeah um so there's definitely like a sort of conventional path that i've taken i think i mean that was the only thing i tell people like i think it also depends on the field like obviously i think there's some fields where maybe a conventional path is necessarily the best path so um but i think you know for the field that at least is sort of like um i guess i'm into this sort of biomedical engineering field unfortunately it's kind of hard to to do much work in that field if you don't have this sort of conventional uh background and so for us that is also about like you know you know just working with the system and trying to um you know try to i guess i one person was saying like i'm like hacking the system like trying to accelerate in the system so sometimes there's that aspect of things but yeah like i guess i think also the nice thing about a conventional system is you do have those goals and like again i work very well with having these goals so it's like you know you have those goals and it's very easy to to you know have that motivation to to meet those goals and so this is not that's another nice aspect of you know the conventional system but you know again it depends per person like i i i do realize there are some people where that sort of system just doesn't work um yeah what is it about biomedical engineering that makes like a more conventional path necessary i think there's again this sort of um so like yeah again it's this sort of thing where you know if you want the best career opportunities i think you have to have at least a bachelor's degree and a lot of the times you do need a phd and those are the sorts of backgrounds that of course um you a lot of companies will require or if you want to get into academia of course that's the standard path but then also uh but it's hard i guess depends on what your what kind of research you're interested in but oftentimes the research is done in academic labs or in in various companies so uh you know you have to be involved in that system to be able to get the hands-on experience so that that is a major challenge i think if you are maybe working in like biology and more of you know life sciences and things like that you do have to somewhat work within that system whereas something like computer science and deep learning and things like that it's definitely much easier to work outside of that system and you know you can change a more unconventional path so yeah i mean there's plenty of um there's plenty of literal high school dropouts who have gone on to very successful careers in deep learning research exactly yeah so that is the that is a challenge if you're in the more yeah more in the biomedical field but yeah sometimes you just have to uh work with that system and um i mean yeah i definitely i think um and i think i think like also it just depends on yeah if you still think it depends per person right like i still feel like i did get a lot out of the commercial system which i i guess maybe for some people that may be kind of interesting but like like i still feel like i learned a lot going through the bachelor's program and then even throughout the phd you know getting more experience with research and you know learning how to do good research i mean we'll come back to this but your phd supervisor is not at all a conventional person that's true that's true yeah um he also had an unconventional background and the lab is definitely unconventional but so like i think there's there's a balance of like you know what opportunities are or what paths are more informational and what paths are unconventional and you know some aspects may be more conventional and some may not be and it just depends again on per person and what works best for them but i think i think i still have gotten a lot out of the experience so it's not like anything that i regret you know going down through this prevention and so for you the okay so i just want to come back to this so you did the geology and stuff at um community college and did you do some paleontology and astronomy at that community college as well yeah i didn't take it i didn't take an officially like a paleontology class and like there was i think part of the geology there's some paleontology and stuff like that did you end up with any kind of degree or diploma or something from that yeah so from the community college i obtained three associates degrees so those are like two year degrees um so in what period of time uh this is in 2015 wait you got three degrees in one year uh well no this still considers like so basically from 2011 to 2014 i was you know that was from seven to ten i was you know doing this sort of two classes per semester situation yeah um and then from 2014 i graduated high school and then from 2014 to 2015 i was taking like four classes per first semester and at the end of 2015 i got these uh for three associate degrees three associates degrees okay so what were the what were those areas what the three areas uh general science math and physical sciences and foreign language studies okay so then you went into um the bachelor's program yes i went into bachelor's in 2016 so i took another year just to finish up some prerequisites okay things like that and then did you do that bachelor's at uh just to clarify and i know i think a lot of the sort of like the problem was like yeah ideally community college in terms of like when i was taking like two classes per semester that definitely was like kind of you know 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 like i really need to get out of high school as soon as possible yeah yeah because you were frustrated right yeah so i think that was another issue like when you say like oh yeah like oh it's kind of slow like i think that was kind of where it comes from is like yeah the two classes kind of absolutely and to that rule that was like placed on you yeah required you to go slow and in hindsight i guess you're saying you don't see any benefit from that yeah yeah so then you did the bachelor's program so what so so what what was the bachelor's program and where was that was that uc davis yes that was uc davis so i technically again um i didn't have when i joined i technically didn't have all the the prereqs for a biomedical engineering program so i technically joined as biotechnology which was like my alternate major on my application but i really wanted to do biomedical engineering like i just really wanted to do that so i managed to like fit in like all the prereqs and get the schedule worked out and i changed my major when i joined into biomedical engineering and like i was taking you know classes over the summer i took like three classes over that summer than i was there and i managed to graduate within uh two years so like you know typically it's like you know when once you transfer it's usually another two years um so i managed to finish up in those two years even with some of the missing prereqs because of the fact that i managed to make it up over the summer so yeah that's gonna balance that up and and to be clear when you say um you always wanted to do research i mean this is not some um implanted memory you believe now when you're in your ted x talk when you were nine this is exactly what you said you said i'm gonna finish a phd before i get my driver's license which you may yet do thanks to completely failing to get a driver's license in the normal time yeah yeah i mean i don't really i haven't had the need to right now and get a driver's license so that's why you guys can and you certainly have a need to not get it unless you fail to meet your childhood dreams yeah yeah okay so you okay so two years of bachelors um and you know i guess the thing about home schooling and stuff is unless you're i mean maybe your parents did it differently but at least in our case we don't really follow a curriculum it's kind of just like oh whatever comes along um did you did you find that a lot of stuff in bachelors was like just revision or did you find a lot of it was stuff like you didn't have the necessary prerequisites to know what's going on or what was the experience of that yeah um andrew i'm just thinking back here you're now like what like 14 years old or how old are you when you're doing it at that time yeah i was uh i was 13 years old 13 yeah um i think once i got to my bachelors i think for the most part it was mostly new content i think there were certainly some you know ideas and concepts that we have you know encountered in the past um and so there's definitely some ideas here and there that like yeah i couldn't already knew uh because yeah it's true that i definitely i think it was also like yeah i think there's also the aspect it's like i've learned whatever i feel like so like um you know there's so like there are some ideas in here and they're like oh i've talked i've learned this already but like for the most part i think it was mostly new content so yeah i don't know um yeah i think there's also like yeah so a lot of that content maybe is also maybe also it's a little bit harder to actually learn you know just based on online resources and stuff like that it's like even some of these classes they don't some of the content don't even like properly follow a textbook or things like that it's more like of course like it's more like the professors are teaching stuff and like and at that point you're like also starting to get i think more into like part of it is like you're arguing a little bit more into cutting-edge stuff and things like that so it's i think it's actually harder to learn like and this is like again more like um you know junior and senior year so like these are like upper upper upper year like upper class like yeah these are like you know more specialized classes like again most of the on you know the freshman and sophomore stuff you know a lot of that you can easily like learn from online material but i think once you get to some of the more specialized material um it may be hard i don't know like again i guess maybe someone it just depends i think on the on the field and stuff like that but i think but yeah i think at that point so then again there's like again there were certain idea like certain stuff like if you're going to be searching a particular field then you'll know a lot about that and then of course if the class covers it is like you know there's no point but like you get the you get the sort of i guess broad perspective of other research fields as well and things like that yeah which interesting which can be really helpful too as well so okay let me now switch to the social experience of being a 13 year old at bachelor's and i will start by contrasting two cartoon versions of what that social experience might be i suspect that the nine-year-old tanish in that ted x talk if asked to describe what it would look like if tanish got to go to do a bachelor's would be like oh my god i'm going to be surrounded by you know fascinating people interested in my field we're going to spend all of our time talking about really interesting scientific concepts where else a you know don't be in a hurry you know parent of a friend might be like oh my god it's going to be a social nightmare for them they're going to be the butt of jokes they're not going to understand what's going on around them and they'll be in the midst of adult ideas which a young mind is not ready for um yeah where on that spectrum was you know did you find yourself what was the experience like for you as a kid you know yeah um i think i think for the most part it was again completely um i mean i think socially mostly mostly it was okay i think it was um again interacting with again it's not like in i'm i've interacted with people of this age these sort of age groups before you know through community college and things like that um i don't i think there there there were some you know sometimes there there may be you know a little bit of friction in certain aspects of things um so for example like you know sometimes you know students may want to work on projects you know for example overnight at someone's house or apartment or whatever door or whatever and i would maybe i would you know i wasn't as comfortable as my parents were definitely not comfortable with that and there's also all the like stuff with like um yeah there's also that stuff with like um formals and bowls and student clubs and all that i guess like you wouldn't really have got to participate in i was involved in like um we have we had like a biomedical engineering club so i was involved in that club um and i think there's like maybe one a couple one or two other clubs so i'll go to like some of the socials and stuff like that and of course things like going to bars and stuff like that obviously i can't i'm not going to participate in those and sorts of things you know there are certain again that's true even now obviously um so there are certain um social activities that i cannot participate in but like i still also have plenty of other social activities that i participate in so um it wasn't like certainly yeah i don't think i wasn't like missing out too much on you were feeling like yeah you weren't feeling like you were missing out on something important or feeling jealous not really i think yeah i mean certainly there are some aspects of like yeah i don't know for the most part like i managed to like make it up by like going to a lot of these social activities and you know even interacting during class and stuff like that and did you get some of that like intellectually exciting engagement about your field of interest that you were hoping for yeah i mean socially like i mean again just from social stuff where i don't it's not like i'm always talking about research and things things like that i mean of course there's definitely that engagement i'm getting from going to classes and talking to professors and you know even talking to um other undergraduate researchers or even some of the you know phd mentors or whatever so i do get that engagement but then also a lot of the engagement sort of socialization and engagement that i have with other uh students and at the same time it was just regular i get socialization i guess i don't know there's nothing like it's not i'm not always talking about i guess you know biomedical engineering there's you know i'm talking about other things too so you know well you and i always talk about deep learning so what is that that's always true we we they're like during the meetings we especially at the beginning you talk about you know what you're up to we talk about what we're up to and things i guess it's always true i'm very happy talking about deep learning this so that's probably my fault i mean they like talking about all this research and stuff too but like yeah i mean i just i just try to balance everything i guess yeah everything balanced but it sounds like overall that that that experience was closer to what a starry-eyed nine-year-old tanishk was hoping for than then what a you know the conservative parent might have been worried about i think so yeah i think so i think i think there was more i think there's more like the other thing i think is more like things like um in terms of like what was maybe more stressful or more concerning was actually more like actual work like things like um just the workload because you know i'm taking like again four classes and again most of most of the sort of work is actually not the learning it's more of actually doing whole work and you know uh essays and projects and stuff like that and you know that's not a lot of it is not actually learning the concepts it's just like actually doing that work and so yeah um it's a lot of work yeah it takes time there's a lot of workloads that that can sometimes be a little bit stressful and then and there's certainly again there were some you know like i mentioned some sometimes there will be friction between um you know with certain people so you know it's about sometimes managing those social dynamics so there's certainly more i think there was definitely some social dynamics that i had to manage when i was in in bafflers um but for the most part you know i think it was a value valuable and interesting and engaging experience um as a whole but or are there like you know in terms of both the being of the bachelors and the process to getting there in hindsight are there now you know regrets or things you wish you had done differently or do you feel overall like the path you talk is you know feels like the right one in hindsight think of anything yeah nothing comes immediately to mind in terms of like regrets or anything like that i think yeah i think for the most part i think in terms of the bachelors program yeah i think it did what what i wanted to do i think okay so maybe like one um one thing was potentially 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 was like um you know being a researcher i even actually during my bachelors i unfortunately didn't get to spend as much time working on research as i wanted to um because there was a lot of classwork and especially uh you know yeah especially in these last two years in a typical bachelors program these last two years are especially busy in terms of like for example the final year we have like a senior design project which is basically like we have to design a device and build it and supposed to meet kind of needs and all this sort of it's a whole process 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 things that like took a lot of time and didn't so i didn't get much opportunity to do research and so uh you know things like oh um maybe i don't have any many papers when i when i graduate or anything like that like sometimes and you know it can be hard to like you know compete for things like fellowships and stuff like that when it comes to that and eventually like i was originally working in synthetic biology um and in the lab that was interested that i was working in and i wanted to continue in that lab but then yeah i think the professor was also maybe a little bit concerned about certain things and wasn't willing to have me on um based on your youth or based on no i think more based on the sort of research i'll put around i don't know i think you know because you were so busy with all the work you had to do for your bachelors but i was like i think he was like yeah so i think that must have happened like oh i shouldn't have spent so much time on classes and stuff like that like that was like my thing like oh why did i spend so much time i should spend more time on research but in hindsight that allowed me to pivot more directly towards deep learning so in hindsight like i think it was kind of good that i actually you know was maybe did it yeah that that didn't work out and allowed me to pivot into this new field where i feel like it's you know it's very promising and something that i really enjoyed i mean the other thing was like a few like synthetic biology was like maybe more on maybe could be more exhausting because it's like the sort of that's the sort of research where you do have to spend like eight to eight to six or eight to even like something like you know i spend like 12 hours in the in the lab every day you know doing stuff and also like it seems from the outside like synthbio is exciting but also still pretty speculative as far as i can tell where else deep learning is changing the world right now i mean i'm still pretty excited about it but like yeah i can 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 turn out but like it's like time spent working on ai in medicine is very likely to have a significant impact on society where else synthbio feels like i don't know kind of feels like working on quantum computing or something i mean i still think that bio is probably more like further along in quantum computing but yeah i see which in the end um but so i think in the end it turned out for the best but i think at the time that was definitely kind of like i had i think i maybe had a little bit of that concern i was like oh did i did i do the best thing here and the other thing is like yeah like things like competing for fellowships and stuff because you know you see they're competing with that was a non-made made a challenge is you're competing with all these students who have gone through the whole process right they they they've gone from high school maybe they've even done some sometimes they give research opportunities in high school so they have some research opportunities there then they've done the typical bachelor's program so they've done the four years and usually they join a lab by the end of like their first year and so they have three years of doing research and so at the end of their bachelor's program they've probably had already at least one first authored paper and so when you compare on paper my resume to these other folks a lot of times they will select you know those other folks because they already have all these papers in this sort of experience whereas i don't of course that i mean i'm in a whole different situation in terms of my background and i guess my potential as well but that's not what they're looking at so there's also that issue as well which for a long time it would you know i didn't have any fellowship it was hard i did have a fellowship an internal fellowship for mr davis but i wasn't able to get any external i couldn't get any external fellowships for for this reason so there was sort of that issue as well where i was like oh maybe this was this is a bit of a challenge and it's hard to compare i guess for these folks to compare but i mean it must have felt it must have felt like a bit of a serious kick in the guts at the time like it must have been a real good point yes it certainly did i think you know at that time i was like certainly like thinking about what it was going to do and you know i was like yeah in terms of like getting fellowships in terms of finding a lab all these sorts of things this is at the beginning of my phd basically and it was certainly a major major challenge uh and having said that it's not like it's not the kind of disappointment that is unknown for children to deal with like kids in sport deal with that all the time right they're like didn't get into the first team or whatever it's it's it's not necessarily a bad thing to have some experience of finding out should be and at the time it was all like a new experience either it's not like like it's just overall like i haven't you'd think you'd be surprised like i haven't gotten many scholarships or anything like that you people think oh you must have easily gotten like tons of scholarships and stuff like that but surprisingly i i've not been able to you know get those sorts of um opportunities luckily for you know undergrad i didn't actually get one scholarship that definitely helped and things like that but like you know it's not like i've you know i've heard definitely from a lot of people like oh wow you must have like gotten like tons of scholarships based on your achievements like that's not this actually the scenario i've been rejecting him from lots of different scholarships lots of different opportunities so it was not even at that time it wasn't something that was new to me um it was so it was certainly a saddening experience i think each time you get rejected it still kind of stings a bit it's not like oh i don't care about that but you know and eventually i think it all worked out through the best and i think that's what what matters at the end so you know you just kind of have to even when you get rejections you have to keep your hopes up that it eventually works out because it tends to eventually work out so that was yeah you know i'm lucky that that's what happened so before we um talk about like the phd more i'd love to just go back over some things that i was curious about during during those earlier years um one is um the the uh the time you went on the conan o'brien show so for those who don't remember conan was huge you know he was the big late night show guy and um and you were his guest um so yeah how did how did that happen yeah so um so actually i was on this uh show uh child genius which was this kind of competition for many different child prodigies and so i was in order to actually promote that show that's kind of what um you know that's why i was invited there um and so yeah that's kind of it just came through that and so yeah they were they had a few they were trying to get some of the different testins to go on various late night shows and i guess or different various shows i guess like i think yeah there's like conan and like i think one like the late late show and like i think ellen and things with dad so they had yeah they had they had some of the kids go on different shows so i got to go on conan um yeah and so we have child genius here in australia i wonder if it's the same thing it's kind of like a kind of a quiz show where they do like stem things and memory things and what pretty much yeah i think all of the same show um it was originally a a british show um and that's the original show was from from britain and then they they wanted to do it also in the us so uh i think they did two seasons of the show i was in the first season yeah we did two or three here as well and weirdly enough the guy who won the first like we i kind of live in the middle of nowhere a bit but funnily enough the guy who won the first series in australia lives like i don't know five or ten minute drive from your house it's really random so do you do do you know that person i kind of don't i always feel like i should reach out but i don't know if it's like lame or not yeah it's funny that people now kind of recognize me from these appearances and it's sometimes i mean it can be kind of nice to be like oh it's like it's just kind of an additional connection like i mean they're people who are in the ml community and they're like oh i've ever seen you on the show it's cool to see you here now it's like how did you go in the show i think you you probably know like i think it was like a bojan um you know on twitter i think um or you know he's like the kaggle grandmaster who's like um you know he's that fg boost guy as i like to say um anyway he i remember once he treated me he's like oh yeah i remember watching this show um you know a while back and you know we were rooting for you and things like that it was like kind of funny to see and i think he also was kind of interested and then there was like i think someone yeah i'm one of like one of the collaborators i'm working with right now also he was like when i i met him i think at like i think it was at one of the i think it was at icml in the virtual conference or something and he like almost immediately recognized me it was kind of so it's kind of still funny to recognize me um and how did you go in the show oh he didn't i was like um so there was like eight rounds i got eliminated after the fifth round unfortunately oh not bad by one point or something you got a little bit but uh yeah it was you know yeah still sometimes kick myself about that but like you know it's all good at least in the one i had here a lot of it seemed to be about memory and it seemed like knowing some basic kind of mnemonic memory palace kind of techniques we've got you a long way did you is that the same for yours um yeah but it was i think i think yeah it was different it was still like the sheer amount of stuff that you needed to have memorized it was definitely a little bit difficult especially the other issue was like at that time again i was liking i think i was still taking like again like maybe two uh it just happened to me this summer but at the same time i was still taking like two summer classes and you know these are like eight week classes that go by very quickly so i'm like trying to keep up with both my summer classes as well you know this quiz show so i think that definitely got a little bit tough i mean you know is you know the other contestants definitely did not have anything like that to worry about nothing uh there was definitely that very you know i of course i felt like you know my my college classes definitely had a higher priority but um i think um so i think that was like maybe one of the reasons why it was a little i struggled a bit you know just because like you know it's like a week it's basically weekly so like after you do like it's like or like every one or two weeks so it's like one week of one subject then you get the material for the next subject and you've got it like you know this is like okay this is what kind of material for the next subject so you gotta study that so it's like every week it's got to study and then of course i had my classes and then sometimes they'll come to your house and film you know because they want to have all right yeah they do all the background is whatever it was it was a very chaotic um so yeah in spite of all that you know i guess you know i managed to send my well i mean there were still i mean still some of the memory stuff i i'm still kind of like amazed that i could do some of that stuff still did you learn like explicitly at some point some of those kind of memory palace techniques or kind of uh not you know number lists techniques yeah yeah exactly so like i mean i actually did they teach you that or that was something you would already know yeah i never actually learned anything like that in the past um and then it was it was yeah so i never actually did any memory palace stuff in the past um i think maybe something that probably should explore even more even further now a lot of it i do tend to just do road memorization and it seems to work very seems to work fine for me overall like i've memorized speeches that you know like 20 20 minute speeches and i can memorize them in like two hours just road memorization and i just managed to do that like um you know so i've never had an issue with that kind of thing but there were some parts where like so there was like one part was like a deck of cards and memorizing a deck of cards that one was a little bit harder to do road memorization yeah absolutely yeah so so i mean the day before the day before the actual competition or the actual quiz um we decided to train change strategy and i studied how the memory palace method worked and this is like yeah one or two yeah i mean there's no way you can do that without hemonic techniques so yeah this is like one or two days before the actual quiz and you know of course that's not including the time going to fly and all the hotel and all that so this is one or two days before like yeah about a day before and i i just studied the uh memory palace technique we came up with this sort of memory palace and and i was trying to play around with it and i was like starting to get like you know 49 50 of the cards now correct and i was like starting you know i said now i was like okay i feel pretty confident about this before you know i was not i was only getting like maybe half of the cards and like i'm really struggling and with the memory palace it really seemed to work i said it turns out for the actual competition i did the actual quiz and did the actual memorization i think we were giving like an hour to memorize it or something like that i think it was about an hour yeah i think it was an hour and i managed to get all 52 correct nice well some people might not be familiar with this so can you explain how what a memory palace technique is or maybe specifically what technique you use to memorize the whole deck of cards because a lot of people would be if they aren't unfamiliar the technique will be like oh okay this guy's a total teen mess but actually anybody can do this right yeah yeah yeah so the way i had it set up was like so you have like you know if it's like a you know ace of space you know like an ace of yeah ace of spades or something like that you know basically like that you have you assign it you know like ace you assign to some sort of um you assign different characteristics like ace could be like for example maybe a person some somebody you know or something like this i think that's how i had it set like the ace was a person and spades would be like maybe something um related to spades so i don't know like you know some novel or something like this you know something related so so the end of person like is also probably related so like if it's an eighth maybe you'd be something maybe a person whose name starts with an a or something like that yeah and then what you do is that you know you have like in this case cards in a deck so uh the way i had it set up was like you know you have 52 locations in say your house and then you know they're in some sort of order and then you kind of um you kind of imagine that at each um location you you put this sort of card so by putting the card you're thinking of whatever object or person or whatever you have with whatever action you know based on you know ace of spades it's like some person with the spade or something like something some sort of action in the person and then you put them at that sort of location in right or your palace your memory palace in your imagination exactly in your imagination palace which i had is just my house and then you have these different locations and then when you're remembering it you can kind of just walk along that path and you know you kind of just visually are walking along that path and like okay you're at you know for example you're at the garage okay now in the garage we're supposed to be there you know you've already placed that person he comes much easier because you you know you have like a person you have an action it's more like tangible it's much easier to memorize and say ace of spades like exactly and there's also segways from one to the next like exactly maybe kind of like maybe sometimes some people try to like maybe come up come up with like a story or something like that to just kind of you know further you know cement that sort of uh you know that pattern did you ever read the book moon walking with einstein i have not that's that's great yeah it's um so i don't know if you've heard of ed cook ed cook was like the greatest memory world memory champion of all time like one i can't remember five or six world championships or something and basically he he worked with a guy called joshua four who was a journalist slash author who considered himself a very bad memory and bought josh for these memory techniques over a one-year period and then josh for entered the u.s national memory championships to see how he went you know and um it's a quite a delightful book actually and i've actually met josh she's a really super guy he he went on to found uh batless obscura you know that fantastic i think yeah i think that's like all kinds of interesting kind of bankoids about it looking so yeah yeah and uh yeah his his point was basically yeah and anybody can yeah do this to an extremely high level if you just learn how um and i've spent a significant chunk of time learning that as well the more you know there's like it's also useful for learning about your own psychology because you learn about how brains remember things that are like funny ridiculous violent related to celebrities related to family members whatever so you kind of come up with a story with the properties of things that our brains are good at remembering yeah yeah some of my house is written down the exact thing i have to find that like there's a i have a paper of like the exact uh yeah what i've assigned you know for the different cards and then the other thing is like i was kind of surprised like even with memory palace how long you can remember it i think like maybe yes there were so i was still able to remember it which just like had a surprising like you know and if you then follow a spaced memory technique for yeah if you then follow a spaced memory technique for revising it you will literally know yeah then you'll remember our feed yeah but i mean i i didn't really care if i could put that forever i i guess there's something important you you definitely could do that and you know yeah um so i don't know that's kind of interesting um so actually talking of which do you used you know spaced repetition at all or have you um i mean i think i dabbled in it for a bit um but you know i think it's just like something like this so like for me yeah i think this i i definitely still want to investigate it i guess it's like i think there's a lot of this like sort of system and also like um and it's definitely something that it's like something i definitely need to get started with and i still haven't you know dying i think i you know i've definitely dabbled with it like i think i maybe made a few cards like an anky or something like i think there was like an anky droid app or something like this yeah there is an anky droid app and i was like playing around with it um so let me just quickly explain to people who might not be familiar this is just like a really simple idea that came out of the 19th century research by a guy called uh having house it basically says if you try to remember something um that you previously learned after one day and then after three days and then after a week and then after three weeks and then after a couple of months you know this kind of exponential increasingly time scale yeah you'll remember it forever with you know super linearly decreasing amounts of effort um so yeah i i actually would love to uh uh encourage you to try it because um my my daughter does it you know and it's so cool teaching her and her friend math and knowing they do their anky cards each day so i know everything i've ever taught them they definitely remember all of it because if they didn't you know then their anky would be revising it at the right time and my wife's yeah thank you stuff is like at a certain point like doesn't your deck become unnaturally large and like very difficult to to deal with no not if you manage it carefully because you have exponentially increasing just time distances between h1 it's yeah that doesn't happen so i learned chinese i learned chinese and i have a bad memory i would say i don't know everybody's memory is pretty similar statistically speaking but yeah i think mine maybe is slightly worse than usual but i learned 6 000 chinese characters faster than anybody at the chinese university had ever heard of basically by doing anky and not just anky but also using a fairly sophisticated um mnemonic methodology that had been developed at the university of huai and um yeah i still remember those characters and one of the things i really like about it tanishic is that it forces you to like get serious about recognizing your both capabilities and limitations which is to say if your anky deck is too much then you are trying to learn more things than you can remember you know um so then you have to make a choice like okay you're doing things optimally it's too big so you now have to decide what things do you want to learn because you can't you know so then you kind of don't end up studying so much that you can't remember it so right i i like that about it you know and um yeah my wife's studying for masters at the moment she's already got a phd so she's keeping busy and she's using anky for the first time and she's just like oh my god i don't have to study for exams anymore you know she gets 100 percent because she knows she knows it all i knew like like uh medical commonly that reason i don't know how successful it is i assume it's pretty successful if everyone's doing it but yeah i don't know why it's so popular in medicine but almost nothing else but i feel like for claire you know when she does that for the next 12 years everything she's there's not everything that she's learned to remember everything that she's learned that she wants to remember to remember so i always say to her don't add a card until like unless you want to remember it forever or your teacher tells you this is something you do need to know um so anyway sorry for the slight diversion is there a way of benefit like i don't like for example medical school students they like tend to uh like download anky decks online and things like that and i guess mine like things like yeah that's a bad idea yeah like what is it like because then i've talked to other people and they're like well you know it's maybe you know like you're still memorizing it and still remaining in memory so like i guess that's another thing i was like writing it down yourself versus using other people and you guess it's also yeah yeah no no do it yourself so actually there's a guy called peter wasniak who rediscovered the work of ebbing house independently and has dedicated his life to you know practicing it and studying it and he's got a great website called super memo dot guru and he's got 20 tips for like actually learning stuff and one of the key tips is like yeah like create your own cards and like they need context you know so like for my chinese i listened to a lot of podcasts in chinese and every character i learned that you know i would have the sentence where i first learned about it as part of the card for claire's cards you know there's always a drawing or a snapshot from a youtube video or something of like this is where you like this and that you've got the context you've got the reason to remember it you've got the that sense of like oh this is what i was doing at the time you know all the stuff that helps your brain yeah if you download anchor cards you miss all that it's yeah okay you know yeah yeah i think it's definitely this you know the sort of things like well like i think also like i don't like um i think like radic made a whole anchor card sort of situation for you know fast ci course she he had like a quiz website and all and ai quizzes.com or something yeah yeah that was doing it and i think um i was getting emails and then i think it was doing it i don't know did i think like the emails stopped or something so i don't know if i messed up something or if it just like stop taking emails so i think there's a good reminder for me to go back and check that as well because that obviously the ai stuff is stuff that i definitely want to you know make sure the other thing i'll say though is if you're using the things you learn you remember it like i never use anki or anything for like any programming topic or whatever i just i just code because i hear like a lot of times um sometimes yeah programmers use it for example to memorize apis and things like that so as you're saying you you mentioned that because seems like that's another app a common application i think like people like sometimes there are programmers who do that so yeah i'm curious why i guess you just never i guess as you're using it like do you ever feel that they can maybe yeah there may be certain apis or certain like commands and stuff that you may feel like yeah i've just never found that i i yeah because i'm using it anyway so after that uh sorry i hadn't quite realized uh you wrote child genius and it's a sign of show and that's super interesting to me but i want to yeah so coming back to okay so you're on conan um now i don't know if i'm being ridiculous or over sensitive or whatever but my reaction to seeing you on conan was i felt um pretty mad actually i felt annoyed at him because it's not that he said anything rude to you but i definitely felt like he was like i don't know what i don't know what you're saying in american history i'd say taking the piss you know he was like basically imply you know laughing at the fact that you're interested in physics or laughing at the fact that you want to get a phd um yeah i mean what i mean did you did you feel that or did you feel it's all good or how i'm looking back do you feel differently to how exactly i think you may be like the first person who's ever said anything like that before so honestly i'm kind of surprised that you you you think that way i don't know it's like every like i've had i mean if you didn't feel that way then that's good experience on the show right i mean he was you know you know i mean he seemed like it's really nice to you backstage and whatnot right well i didn't the other thing was like you know when you was it was a comedy 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 like you know i i i definitely realized that you know me i guess yeah well some of the examples were like you know me wishing for enzymes for christmas or you know a calculator or textbooks and things like that and you know it's like even i understand even at that age i realized that that is you know abnormal and like it's not like delivers things like like we it was also things like we brought up like you know this was like yeah this is something we could talk about it's kind of funny it's like and like you know you know i realized that like you know this is this 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 it was more like oh it's different it's kind of interesting kind of thing you know it's not that's kind of what it was like oh it's kind of funny that it's interesting like you know this kid like wants enzyme like even like you know i know like i really want it but i realized you know people find that kind of odd and you know i i didn't have any i didn't take an issue with it that's great i mean now i feel kind of lame for taking issue with it because i definitely felt like it um i mean you know conan himself was like he's a very smart guy to he went to harbor and 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 i think it was not it was not you know they're not it's course that's great you know that they don't have any illville against me or anything like that so oh no i mean of course not i just yeah i was just joking about the fact that you're an intelligent person who has bold dreams i don't know like if some kid went on who had just won the under 1700 meters track and field when they were 11 i don't feel like that would they would be laughing about you know if they said like what do you want to be when you grow up and it'd be like a professional athlete like you know i don't know it just feels i don't know if they were necessarily laughing about that it either was more laughing about like yeah you know kind of funny then you know i want in terms of or like and then of course i was telling jokes too and that was kind of absolutely love your jokes that so um i don't know i i felt like like i thought the chemistry between me and kon and the other guest work was 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 felt like personally i thought it was that it was a you know a fairly good interview uh all together i mean i mean obviously it must have been given that nobody else has complained about this kid before and you didn't feel the same way so absolutely it's uh yeah that's why i prefaced this by saying i i might be totally i don't know i think you know i think it was like you know kon is i think known for his kind of self-deprecating humor and i think it was just kind of you know kind of along that sort of line of you know yeah oh i mean i love konan to be clear i i watched him nightly for years yeah i have no problem with the guy i think it's great and it was good that also like you know he we met him before before the interview and you know stuff like that's just to you know make me feel more comfortable yeah yeah i think even like if i did get to meet him and stuff you know maybe i could see myself maybe feeling a little bit maybe weird to help by there something like that i don't know and then i mean they really like me have it on the show and like i think later on they wanted me to do like one of their web exclusives or something like this with like like fester brian cox or something like this so that they have me up for another thing like that oh i never saw that that's interesting yeah it's like on it's on like the teen cocoa website so i don't think many people have seen it actually but like i did one so i came back later um uh yeah so i actually came back for another episode where brian cox was a guest and um after his interviews i got to watch the interview and you know kind of be part of their you know part of the backstage you know and then after afterwards when brian cox was done um uh then they yeah i got to interview him and you know just also had another bit good time that's awesome we love brian cox um yeah so that was another um event and like yeah so yeah i really yeah it was i really had a lot of fun actually but you know both of those current sessions i was like yeah that's like what one of the coolest things i feel like i've i've done so amazing yeah of course you know i've done a lot of cool things um you know i've had to you know i'm very grateful and lucky but i think this is also one of the cool things that i got to do well let's yeah i mean so tell me more what what are other like memorable moments in your life or like just things that you look back on and feel a lot of joy or pride or whatever yeah um or and certainly like even now is like i think now i kind of feel like maybe i'm in that stage where like wow this is like you know part of this sort of ai revolution and being kind of you know at the forefront of that you know at this company that is all obviously you know taking leading charge on that and you know working with lots of um respectable names in the field um and um yeah like like something like yeah what we're doing yeah i just feel like what we're doing right now um is yeah it's going to change the world right 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 as much as possible um and so i'm just kind of like trying to enjoy the ride as well um so that certainly like that comes to mind like you know i for example the stability ai launch party i was i was in attendance for that and it's like you could see like you know these are like the biggest names in the field like in the in the tech industry overall not just in ai like you know i don't know if you heard like sir gay brin was there and i do like it's like you know the biggest need in the field and they're all there to to witness this and it's like i'm lucky to be part of that team um you know i that's kind of you know i i this may be going in the history books we never know i mean absolutely and not just part of the team but later in that team yeah that's why i'm really excited to to be um in that space and i think i'm i think those memories are being made right now yeah um let's see what else i mean it was cool that like you know you you invited to one of our regular chats the guy who basically built the technology that yeah that stable perfusion that the stability ai is based on and we got to hear from him directly how it came to pass and yeah it's like he yeah because he yeah i i know him now it through stability and it's kind of interesting to to interact with you know someone who's clearly the leader in the field and um and learn from them like that's the biggest thing is like i was trying to and this is what you really always wanted right like that you were talking about as a kid is wanting to do research with top researchers exactly yeah this is definitely i definitely the dream um and yeah so that's an awesome answer um what about yeah going back a bit other yeah memorable moments like i was going to say like the tanex talk was definitely a memorable woman i think yeah there's a lot of preparation that went to that actually you know it was like actually a few months of preparation so yeah it was actually quite uh i mean your delivery was excellent you know yeah definitely i practiced it several times you know they they gave some some help as well and um i think it 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 you know somewhat some of the international trips were also very exciting too so like yeah i was reading about a trip you took to india to vjti where your mom was saying that one of your ancestors had been like director of his institute or something is that is that one of those memorable trips for you yeah the dean of the college or something like that yeah um so yeah i was invited to to speak at one of their um i think it was like some tech uh event you know like so it's like so what is vjti oh yeah vjti is like one of the again leading uh universities the tech universities um in india so you know india does have a lot of good uh it because focused universities in general so vjti is one of those universities um and so they have like the sort of i think it's like technobanza or some of these it's a fairly big event multi-day event um and you know they have uh you know they have lots of different things going on competitions talks all kinds of different you know tech related stuff um so they invited me to give like i think it was like kind of like one of their keynote talks or like one of their they have a non-talk series and you know there's a lot of esteemed um guests that have given talks uh in the past through this talk series and i mean it must have been pretty special for your mom too since her her uncle was the director of the place to be to be back yeah well so yeah he wasn't he's not anymore but he was in the past and i think my mom you know had had caught him to the university in the past and uh you know uh you know had made you know some visits in the past when when my yeah been when when he was there and so actually afterwards um after the talk we actually you know they have the the the living quarters for the for the dean over there and we actually made a visit and my mom was actually a little bit nostalgic about like yeah because she she actually come there before she yeah she went there before and it was hanging around she she had you know she had made a few visits so she she was actually a little bit nostalgic about that you know definitely yeah definitely proud of that you know um then you know uh you know several years later hit up you know 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 was really great about that trip was so you know there's a lot of students and also there was a lot of like high school students as well so like a lot of high school students came and um and it's like i think they had some competitions and stuff like that and then they had me like give the awards to all the students actually wow and they also and even afterwards that a lot of the students came up to me and they were you know they wanted to take pictures of me and they were wanting to to get my heart over the abs and it was like it was like kind of like i think like that's like i'm very glad to know that i've inspired a lot of you know students around the world i think that definitely the huge impact not so like like that's another thing like about like i think we'd be talking about this earlier in terms of like what i'm doing as a researcher but in an also blind journey as a child prodigy and like balancing that out in terms of like who i am as you know is my identity right i think i think um you know inspiring all these students you know through my journey is something that i'm definitely very proud of um and so i definitely yeah i take a lot of pride in that and so that's why like i don't also want to i don't want to minimize that obviously yeah but so the balance you're talking about there is like at one level you know you were lorded recognized as a child genius child prodigy and that is something which can provide a role model direction inspiration for other kids but at another level you know now you're you're not a kid you're an adult and you i guess would want to be recognized for your current achievements rather than your that you know your interesting past is that is that the compromise you're referring to yeah exactly yeah um yeah yeah that's kind of what i'm talking about um yeah and so i said you know these sorts of events where like you know i get to talk to some of these people all these students um you know kind of face to face reminds me of you know that you know my my journey has added a huge impact on others uh you know there's so many moments like that like yeah i think a couple i think it was like last year or so or maybe yeah a couple years ago there was some news about you know uh there's a student who also was trying to accelerate in her academic um in india and the the the judge actually cited i think my tedx talk um you know and and use that as you know ed kind of a as evidence or like kind of as um you know typically just for in support of the student so you know even kind of i get that the you know even in the courts that they are using my case to help to help other students and that's obviously something that's well as are we i mean um in my family you know i've watched your tedx talk with my daughter it's like perfect timing for her because she's at the age that you're referring to in the talk even though you were two years older and we've also watched child genius australia together which is generally around about kids at more eight or nine but you know in the general ballpark and yeah i think she you know she liked seeing people that doing things that seemed exciting and um not totally out of reach and being as respected and appreciated for that absolutely i think it does um i think it's made a difference for our family yeah that's that's really good to hear yeah yeah so yeah it definitely means a lot to me when i when i hear that from from people so even you know even so it was good to to see that both in person um you know i was there at the gti and then also in the same trip we also went to like a high school um and you know i think yeah the they invited me in to to give a talk and also my sister did to sing there and and then a lot of people yeah um you know we're very happy and they they asked they asked us a bunch of questions they were very engaged and and um yeah it was it was good to to to see that you know it certainly um i guess lighted up their day and and um and inspired them and and then i still get messages occasionally on on you know on twitter facebook whatever and you know that's also you know always great to see and also i mean i i imagine your trip to nasa must have some special memories yeah is that chronologically yeah i'm not quite sure how that where that is my trip to nasa i must have been like nine years old or so so yeah it says here you're in nine july 2012 yeah so like that was also like a very interesting trip because i was like starting trip maybe download a little bit of research so that's kind of gonna like started first dabbling in a bit of research and so that was like me talking about um i think it was like something but like citizen size tools and how it could be used or something something like it was like oh nice uh moving topography and stuff like that and there's like a different in the different citizen science tools and i was like comparing them and talking about that so so yeah i was doing something like that because yeah at that time of course citizen science tools were kind of like one of the few ways i could you know get involved so i was like really excited to play around with such tools and you know how did you get that how did you get that opportunity because at least according to what i'm reading it says you're the youngest person to speak at a nasa conference i mean i've been to a few you know nasa events in the past that i think we were able to reach out to some of the the folks there and they were very willing to to support me and support my interest so luckily through that you know through some of the folks there so this is uh by the way 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 through like singularity yeah yeah through rescue yeah it's a it's a fascinating campus with that giant uh airship um thing in the middle yeah i remember like the back then so like i know there was like like i think they were like you know dismantling it i think there's like asbestos problems or something yeah that's exactly right they they dismantled it and actually um they let if i remember correctly sergei and larry used the airstrip there kind of in exchange for them helping to fund that oh yeah you know so yeah i was lucky to be there before it was torn down well as i was going like you know i think maybe you know some of the first events were like maybe in 2010 2011 and then i started going for you know it for a few years like i was like watching you know seeing it getting dismantled over you know months and months and you just see it like slowly getting dismantled so it was kind of interesting to kind of see that um but yeah so i made a few contacts at nasa aims that way um yeah and you know cool i know the i guess the lure science institute or whatever that they had there and they were kind of saying for me it was quite an inspiring place to be around like there's always interesting things happening and um yeah like you know they have this they had this amazing visualization kind of wall they had uh quantum computing happening there and of course the place is kind of dotted with relics of the space here around the place yeah would have i mean as a like i mean for me as an adult it was bloody exciting but i guess for a nine-year-old it must have been even more amazing it was definitely very exciting um and yeah i think that was probably maybe that may have been like my first conference now that i think about it i think that may have been like my first scientific conference that i attended uh maybe it was still like mostly like you know high school student stuff but they like presenting research and stuff so it was still kind of like a you know it was like a symposium so yeah like a you know research related and so i was you know i think that was like a really great event for me to kind of like soak that all in uh and and also at that at that age my understanding talking of astronomy you you started a or co-founded a astronomy club yeah yeah college yeah so i think i guess like yeah i was taking a astronomy class there and then you know there's a lot of big club opportunities you know at community colleges and so um yeah i think maybe we talked about like you know clubs and stuff like that um so like even even in community colleges there are a lot of great clubs in terms of like yeah geology biology all these different clubs yeah um and so even then i was like wanting to get involved in those sorts of opportunities but it turned out for like the astronomy department they didn't actually have any sort of student-run club or anything like that um so you know i just you know brought that up to my professor and said like this is something maybe we could could have over here um and um yeah he was he was also on board and you know interested in you know helping out because you have to have like one faculty member kind of sign off with on your on your application or whatever and then we kind of were starting to recruit folks and so we had some folks who were interested and we formed a small little club um and then um it kind of grew into also a physics club i think they didn't also have a physics club at the time so we need like a physics and astronomy club um but so i was like the founding vice president so i was the vice president for like two maybe two years i think two or three years something like that and uh we kind of started a couple projects um i wasn't unfortunately able to see those projects through but they would manage to finish some of those projects like there were some projects you know sending up you know these high-altitude balloons and doing different experiments and um you know that was all fun i don't know if they like yeah i know that they went went ahead and finally did some high-altitude balloon experiments and the time i was very interested in astrobiology and you know the you know kind of this sort of uh space biology and things like that so i was coming up with like experiments around that focus um i don't know if they actually pursued that but yeah that was another opportunity where i started getting a little bit more involved in reading papers that kind of thing um so that was a really useful opportunity for me and i was yeah really happy to be able to do that and you know so it sounds like a lot of your it sounds like a lot of your highlights are absolutely related quite strongly to your to your studies and your research at least in that period of your life yeah i guess so um so it's not surprising because it's been yeah i mean not many adults would have had those opportunities that maybe a little bit different one um yeah i'm afraid i think there's anything that's fine i'm not trying to push you in a different direction i actually wanted to switch that on its head a little bit if that's okay because like yeah i mean i'm just thrilled to hear that you've had so many amazing opportunities and experiences and they've brought you joy and excitement but uh you know i was wondering if you don't mind also sharing like what have been some of the toughest moments in your recently short career and life so far and how have you dealt with those yeah i mean i kind of maybe i've touched on it on a few already in terms of just like a lot of it is dealing with naysayers and folks are what was that time being bullied in grade three would that be like up there or is that kind of gotten far enough in the past now or during the time in community college also um so i was in basically up until i graduated high school i didn't even know even after that you know um you know for graduate high school um like i was taking community college classes and say for example chemistry and the professor was like oh i'm not sure if you're you know going to be able to carry through the labs and things like that um um what did they mean by that well i guess it's just more like being able to deal with i guess hazardous substances and stuff like that they were already that's not going to be possible with the you know i was at that time 10 years old so and tanish just to clarify did does this feel like a tough memory because that kind of prejudice made you feel angry or sad or is it just the way in which it was stopping you from doing the things you wanted 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 i think you know it was very frustrating that's what it was it was um you know frustrating and um you know it's just like yeah there's a lot that you have to deal with like it just felt 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 they're sort of like baggage in a way well exactly that's how i was like i was actually talking to my wife rachel today before i chatted to you and it's like i was kind of telling her what i wanted to talk about and i kind of said the way i see that period of life it felt like you were saying i want to be allowed to learn and that there was some group of people who were saying you should not have that right and that just seems so wrong to me right right i feel angry on your back yeah yeah you and yeah i mean that you can you can imagine how my parents felt right they were especially uh uh angry and frustrated with the you know the administration with the professors all kinds of yeah so it was it was so yeah i think that's a lot of where my frustration came and then then of course i certainly um you know as as i um i mean even in like university i think certainly um you do have i definitely had you know frustration dealing with you know certain students and things like that and like i said you know what kind of things happened oh just like again um you know certain like you mean more like teasing or it's more like again like i said working you know like they expect you to you know work overnight with them on things like like so like there was a lot of like for example tension with maybe like we had a senior design project and you know there's there's a lot of work that goes into that and even though like so like i was effectively kind of leading you know leading the team like i had in fact um conceptualized the idea that we would work on and you know we decided that's what i'm going to work on and you know all of that but even then there's still like a lot of tension between within the within the group because you know there's certain things i couldn't do like you know work at someone's uh you know stay at someone's apartment overnight to to work on you know the airport or you know yeah whatever and so i mean honestly that feels pretty callous to me i mean they know that you're a kid like it seems like i'm slightly shocked that people were um was it like maybe they just felt like you shouldn't be there at all and that this is their way of i think i think it was like i think it was like certainly like this i think the expectation was you should be like a normal polish did it right like that's kind of the expectation so i think they may be more willing to work you know there's some issues working outside of the box you know outside of those regular expectations um so you know there was a you know there's a lot of tension definitely within the group but uh you know eventually i mean managed to to resolve that you know in a in a i guess in an amicable manner finally at the end but it was definitely how did you do that i think i mean at a certain point i think there was also some involvement of um you know the the professors um and and you know i guess there was i don't remember if like i'd i don't really find necessarily doing anything but i was traveling i think certainly i think they eventually did become more understanding and accommodating after some time i think maybe when they realized they couldn't really push me to you know do do these sorts of things no i mean yeah exactly like that the outcome that's not going to happen is the 13 year old that came like like a 19 year old because yeah i went to 19 year old yeah so there were certain things like that and then and then i mean of course there's like a i think there was going to be a similar situation with a lot of the the research that i would like undergraduate research um expectations to to to be in the lab for you know some a significant amount of time but i think that was more it's certainly a struggle with kind of balance more with balancing that with the classwork and things like that yeah i mean it sounds like quite often you were almost expected or required to you were held to a higher standard than the other folks like you described earlier with like how to get a's in your you know yeah in college certainly there was higher standards but then certainly there were also like maybe standards that you would expect of a normal student but you know my situation is different and maybe those are not the same status that apply i think there's also that aspect of things so it's not necessarily fire you know just generally but maybe maybe higher and for my particular situation um again that's the same point in terms of like getting fellowships and stuff like that you know my situation was completely different well you know maybe it's not as comparable to the situation of regular students but that is what all the you know application committees considered and you know for that reason i didn't get any any uh fellowships apart from one internal fellowship from uc davis but i went into grad school um and similarly and also with scholarships it was very hard for me to get scholarships and i so in term and i think yeah like certainly there's i think that that was also yeah basically there is that period basically with between sort of like yeah as i was finishing up undergrad kind of coming you know dealing with all the senior design kind of tension and going into grad school maybe um trying to figure out what is the next step and then trying to find a lab um because you know there was you know i had planned to join this particular lab and yeah again there was another issue again things like um rotations lab rotations and stuff again there just was again expectations um and i guess i wasn't able to to meet those expectations it was hard working that out there was again some tension in that scenario i remember one rotation didn't work out because of some tension with one of the the project scientists at postdocs or something like that so there was like you know at that time there was a lot of like attention and definitely some concern about like what lab am i going to join and so actually in reality i joined a lot quite late actually compared to you know most phd students um because so what was that so the tension you referred to like what what did that look like what was what was happening it was more like um i don't know it was like just trying to the the tension was more uh again lots of these are hands-on labs um there there's expectation to be there you know from 9 a.m to 9 p.m or whatever um and so i guess in you know at the time that that wasn't something then you know again i'm like only 14 or something yeah and then also there's this there's also you know classwork and other things um but certainly yeah and then it i guess certainly there may have been also some prejudice in terms of age as well you know i don't like it's not it's not a word prejudice and not going to like show it very clearly but i felt like that probably is still yeah that that under but i mean and that's part of the tough thing about prejudice and being different is it's almost it's very very rare you can actually definitively point at something and say this was due to prejudice but at the same time there's always going to be a big part of you wondering which i think yeah this is what like my mom is always like oh they might be like my mom always thinks like folks are predators about like certain things but like like if you think about like yes my mom is probably right but like you don't want to like believe like how can everyone be like that but like you know it turns out like guys people do tend to sometimes feel first and i think the scene is like true now for my old for my sister you know she's in this sort of very competitive field oh wow and music music and in singing where you know there's a limited response and like you know trying to positions and you know she's very young and it's like uh you know she's trying to get positions and it's it's very difficult and there's definitely a lot of that bias and prejudice happening there as well and um so you know my mom is always like calling that out and you know it's like you know it's probably true um there's probably a lot of that happening um then you just but you just kind of don't want to believe like how can people actually be like that but it's just you know people all like that so yes they are yeah yeah um okay so let's talk about the the phd um i mean let's yeah let's keep kind of going chronologically so yeah it was hard to find a lab and yeah but what happened how did you yeah find something and what did you find so like again like the plan was like okay i was doing some lab rotations but then i was like the backup was still the synthetic biology lab but then eventually i was like oh but then i'm like okay i did some i did a couple lab rotations and as i said a couple dropped out as well and then um this this then i was like going back to this synthetic biology lab then he was like actually didn't really want to have you on board or um you know he wasn't interested in having me in the lab anymore um and this is after me like i mean i was in the lab the same lab for the entirety of like my undergrad right so i was in there for two years then even the summer after i graduated it was like if you're going to be in my lab i want you to spend a few more months doing some hands-on work so i spent like my uh you know like two or three months in the summer also working in his lab even after that and he was like he didn't feel my research output was that great or you know it was not it was not as and he didn't feel like his the environment that he was providing was going to be the best environment for me which i don't know if that was true yeah it sounds like maybe they had um kind of made that decision already and it was possible i think i think you know yeah that may be possible um but you know maybe that it is it may have also been possible like if they were in that lab it probably it might not have been the best environment for me anyway so well i was going to ask i mean it it seems like computational biology is a seems like a fairly natural fit you know which is kind of like what you're doing now right you know it's like neural nets and whatnot and not not a whole lot of you know preparing hazardous materials he wanted me to do was like like so my undergrad research was mostly a lot of computation biology but his lab is technically a synthetic biology lab so um and then i think he wanted me to do some yeah yeah i mean i also was like yeah i don't know if i could use computational biology for the entire PhD so he wanted me to you know i see first play around and do things like that um in the lab and so it was it still it was still a mostly synthetic biology lab where you have to do lots of hands-on work and you know the students are there from again nine nine a half to nine pm and you know they're working long hours trying to get their experiments to to work um so yeah so i don't know in reality maybe you know it was it might not have been the best um yeah so what happened so where did you have to where'd you go and how did that happen yeah so then i was like then then that lab said no i was kind of like really like what am i gonna do um i was like that was my backup and i absolutely didn't work um and then um then i was like what about doing some machine learning because at this point you know i started you know taking the fast a course so this is i mean this was in um well like early 2019 so like yeah so i guess most people watching will know this but so the first day our course is my deep learning course yes and so you are an alum of that course which isn't entirely online and so how old were you when you started that course and and and and why why did you start that course so i must have been 14 when i started the course um i was i think i was just very interested in machine learning because it was just a hot topic at the time and i think um so like i attempted to learn yeah i guess it's kind of going now into my machine learning path um but i so i first so like i think i may have seen like things like kaggle and stuff like that i was like oh it was kind of really cool so this has been in 2016 um so i like this is it so it was like you know well i checked out kaggle i took oh so sorry i'm just gonna keep filling in things again i guess most people are going to know these things but um so kaggle is the main uh kind of international competition platform for machine learning practitioners where i used to you know i was the president and chief scientist when it was started so yeah sorry to try to keep interrupting you no worries yeah yeah um and the funny thing is like you know when you start with kaggle it's like oh like you know i think there's probably like you know i mean when you first see it you're like oh there's these are competitions and you can get we can win money and it's like oh wow it's so cool but then like you basically like and it's not about the money it's just about the experience and learning so yeah i think it's pretty cool like oh wow okay but then like you go into it it's like okay it's you know it's more about the experience that it's very hard to you know and part of it and the community perhaps i mean there's a lot of you know people helping each other and stuff yeah and there's a lot you can learn from from from kaggle and so so this is in 2016 actually so this is even before i went into my bachelors right before i went to uc davis right so i checked out kaggle i then decided i'm going to learn some machine learning so i actually took anorene's course sarah course they're green so i took that um so that's like one of the again one of the leading machine learning courses i think grand sarah was originally founded to to right that course yeah with uh daphne color yeah yeah it's a really good course um and yes but like i think that's again still more like um from the basis kind of it's a bit more of an academic approach yeah it's more pregnant like uh yeah like a typical approach and i feel like it didn't really help my you know more of the practical side of things right so you know i still like playing around with kaggle but like i feel i'm like not like i felt like i was my skills were not progressing anywhere i'm not like improving in terms of you know copy you know how i'm doing competition is nothing like that i feel like i'm not going about this the right way so i in fact took a break from kaggle and you know exploring that um for a bit then i think i just at one point i decided to visit it again in like 20 late 2018 and i was seeing some nice kaggle notebooks so just to i guess it fell in again a lot of the lot of the um on the kaggle platform and especially with a lot of the complications people will post um you know example code and you can run that code and play around with it right and you know like it's like in a jupiter a lot a lot of times jupiter notebook so 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 just go over a lot of these notebooks if you know just for learning purposes um so i think i'm just kind of interested in what's out there and i and i've known you have ended up becoming one of the only notebook grandmasters in the world on that oh yeah that's curious basically i i really like creating notebooks and again me too i am also one of those notebook grandmasters i'm a notebook grandmaster and um a lot of it was using the fasta library and it's funny because that's where i first discovered like the fasta library was oh okay notebooks and i think it may have been like by i think iphos it's one of those one of those again he's again like notebook grandmaster and he was i think he wanted the notebooks he was using fastai and then the notebook did very well in in the competition as well and i was like okay this is very interesting and it looks very simple but it's like doing very well and i should check out this fastai stuff more and i actually remembered that i once saw fastai on twitter or something like this and they had this course and like i was like thinking about looking into that course a bit and i think they may have watched like the first lecture or at least maybe the first 30 minutes of the first lecture or something like that and i decided maybe i should dig into it more so i found so this was in by late 2018 i'm just giving like a whole 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 so i was i went to the lectures but i think that i went to like the first two lectures but then right after that i think you released a new course i think or something like that so then it's like okay um so i think yeah i think you like released a new course a new part one version of the course or whatever so then i was like i'm just going to go through that so then i went through the entire 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 was released um you had you had it released right to the whole public then i went through part one i was participating in the forums you know asking my own question answering other people's questions then as i was also going through part one i looked at some cattle competitions um there was one like i think it all like uh one of the audio classification competitions man i kind of like participated with that and um you know i was like i was so actually you know at the end of the competition i was actually very close to brown's metal i think i may have missed like by like five spots or something like that but like so like it's kind of disappointing but also like i feel like i was doing so much better than i was before and i think like a lot of what i learned from fasta i really kind of you know provide lots of useful skills and then on top of that i was also playing around with um you know i decided well i'm interested of course in biomedical engineering medicine general so i decided to take a medical AI dataset so i looked at uh diabetic retinopathy which is like in a rarity oftentimes they're you know imaging the the eye um the whole um set up um it was actually yeah so this is this is diagnosing diabetes through eye images which is very much a thing and something that it turns out mainly thanks to that competition we've discovered that computers are extremely good at yeah exactly so this was yeah there's a older competition and so i just took the data from that and was just playing around with you know models on that and stuff all and it kind of did in a systematic approach for you know the stuff that i'm learning the fasta class i'll apply it and so that's kind of how i went through the course and did you then do the part two as well i did the part two line so i think i was invited through your kind of i guess your fellowship program whatever okay you should listen to the forums and so i did part two actually alive you know with the live streams so for those who aren't familiar like the part one course of fasta is kind of the introductory beginner level i mean it does take people up to kind of world-class best practices but of specific fairly well-developed and understood applications whereas part two is cutting edge research level reading papers implementing papers trying out new things that haven't existed before so it's a you know um lots of teenagers do part one i think not many teenagers do part two yeah so yeah that was a really fun experience um and the other thing was like i feel like i also learned a lot of like you know just general software engineering and both of these courses which is also really really useful and really helpful um but then so that was part two which ended i think maybe somewhere in the main or something like that um so that was around the time when also you know i was like in this kind of struggle to find a lab and so you know i i really enjoyed both and was that the one i'm trying to remember was that the one where we did all the super resolution stuff with jason and tick or was that the year afterwards um i think it may have been or no i'm just asking because i know i know you've you know ended up in image reconstruction from microscopy i think it might be the year before it might have been the year before down we are was i think the year let's see i think it wouldn't have been it would have been that oh wait no no no sorry that was actually part one 2019 was when we did it yeah yeah so i think this is the year that we had the swift stuffing think no after 2019 no that was 2019 as well i think uh it was oh gosh it's all clarity after 2019 did you do another part two i don't think so right you did 2020 2020 didn't have a part two and then 2021 kind of 2021 didn't even have a part one yeah so that it was 2019 then that was the one with the swift and so i don't think it covered um super resolution stuff no no no well uh actually the super resolution stuff actually was in part one of the course believe it or not it was lesson seven oh okay oh okay that may be right okay yeah i'm just looking at course 18.fast.ai to remind myself part two here we go oh okay so a lot of stuff that would be relevant to you we did cyclegans that's been cyclegans came out direct transfer our way did so first lot of super resolution actually was the end lesson 14 of 2018 so so people who are not familiar with the field this will all be total mumbo jumbo but basically it's little very strongly related to the i mean cyclegans in particular is like literally what you research now right yeah out of it but i actually took course 2019 so that was okay but i definitely didn't look at a lot of those lectures still um you know because that because i definitely knew about the super resolution stuff i think yes okay so 2019 lesson seven was when we did the really full-on super resolution okay so then maybe that's what i saw then that may be what i saw um we did gans we did yeah um so so yeah at that point i was like okay um you know i'm really liking the deep learning stuff i even like a lot of my twitter feed became about deep learning and it's following a lot of these books and the deep learning field and that that that sphere and so so do you want to quickly describe what deep learning is and what it does okay again i guess most people will know but just uh you know make sure nobody's left behind you want me to explain or you want to yeah i want you to explain oh okay i don't know i can say 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 then this is kind of a sub subset of of artificial intelligence ai where you know you apply these neural networks as they call them but they're really just very um so very flexible functions i guess that um you're able to quote unquote train by you know passing in data so it's just a kind of a different framework altogether and in terms of programming usually you write down some rules and algorithms and then you write on data and you get your results but in this case you take data and you pass it into your neural networks and you run these sorts of training processes uh and then you get this sort of neural network at the end that is just learned how to do things yeah and learns how to do things that you can't write the code for the way i describe to people is it's basically deep learning is like the thing that's responsible for pretty much every amazing breakthrough in ai in the last few years yeah you know the fact that your phone you can speak to it that is thanks to deep learning the fact that you can search your you know your photos for pictures of cats even though you didn't say which ones have cats in that's thanks to deep learning yeah yeah all those superpowers yeah okay so you yeah so you started doing this before before even settling on a phd before yeah before like you know yeah i started i was dabbling in machine learning for a while but then when i took the fast ci course that's when i became really focused on this and i decided okay if i'm not joining this synthetic biology lab then maybe i can join a something more machine learning focused so again i found another lab i did a rotation in that lab unfortunately also that didn't work out so then this has by this is actually um you know this is a yeah this is a machine learning lab but again i guess it was just not um a good fit i think it was more of a like a more like like it was still kind of maybe more likely biology and things like that but that was more i think i was still more interested in more like medical aspects of of stuff there's like more applied i think maybe that's also kind of there was you know maybe the the fit in terms of the research ideas and projects that i was interested in maybe it wasn't really there so then at this point this is like end of summer of 2019 and most people you don't get there they joined a lab like you know if you know if they if they people in my batch they would have joined a lab in like march and i'm like right behind here um so i even had special meetings so were you feeling a bit worried at this point i am very worried that yeah i'm extremely worried my parents are worried what are we going to do like um and so like i even met with the chair of the grad group a couple times and then the chair at uc davis yes at uc davis um and then you know he he mentioned a couple of uh labs another couple of lecture about the labs that do are doing more medical research with machine learning um and then um then he was like and then he was like this this there's this one lab that's also going to be joining it at the grad so it hasn't actually joined the grad yet but it's going to join the grad this coming up year uh and there was also he was like okay maybe there's also the other labs on campus which if you're not part of the grad group and they may be able to join the grad group if that's something you're interested in um because we were like maybe there's not there's not many good labs even in within the grad groups there are other labs that university that i could join but they could maybe join the grad group so we kind of figured out all kinds of situations but still mostly focused on doing ai research because i figured yeah that was what i wanted to so and then there was like a couple labs that i you know i met with the the the professors and then i finally got to meet my current professor and like he was joining the research and i thought it was quite interesting and i felt like again it's like a medical research that was more directly applicable right this is like microscopy and pathology and it's like actually talking you know working with how specimens in the clinic are being handled and examined and it's like if if i can do good research in this this is something that would have you know a positive impact more directly at least that's how i felt at the time and i mean i still feel that way but i'm saying that's yeah that's you know how you know how it how it looks like it when i was looking at this research and you know almost immediately i was like yeah this is a good lab i i really i this seems like there's lots of great um deforming opportunities and i immediately kind of said i'm going to join this lab um i didn't even do a rotation or anything and i was like yeah i'm going to join this lab and he was like yeah so what's what what's the name of the lab and who's who are we talking about that's running it yes this is a doctor richard levenson uh which uh yeah he's a um a professor of pathology so he actually has a background in pathology um so he he did his md um a while back like i think in the 70s so this is like a long time and then after that he you know went and just to clarify again for people not sure so pathology my late person's explanation is like kind of like looking at things like biopsies and whatnot you know under under a slide you know maybe staining it a bit and and looking at the cells and so forth trying to you know do a diagnosis and so forth is that roughly like if you need to yeah oftentimes too especially things like where you know the cellular information like the actual cells in in the body you know matter if you need to take those sorts of samples and then you know analyze it under a microscope yeah and pathology covers other things as well of course like blood tests and whatnot but i think your work is mainly around the medical imaging side of pathology histopathology especially like for example a lot of it like cancer but i mean we do of course there's still other um areas but a very common application is looking at you know different cancers and you know you know getting biopsies of different cancers and examining them under the microscope and providing a diagnosis that's a very common application but there's still and so this is like okay so like i um i had already come across you through our forums so fastai has a very bustling forum community of deep learning nerds like me and tenish um and i i'd never spoken to you directly but i you know interacted with you on various threads and yeah didn't i had no idea why because like for a long time i had no idea who you were i think they had a sense that you were like surprisingly young maybe or even i'm not even sure i knew that i mean i get my profile like for a long time actually pretty and like an anonymous profile so like i didn't actually put any information about myself on most of the uh machine learning like even on caggle with stuff like that i actually kept myself pretty anonymous for a while because you know something that's interesting also just interacting with people online i think you know is that basically so there would be no kind of expectations or prejudice or anything but just interact with you for your work and nothing else or was it more accidental like um i mean i think it was like especially my you know i think it's something you hear from you like if my i heard you know you hear from my parents from like you know just be careful who you're interacting with online and like you know yeah don't put a lot of you don't want to put too much information so like at the most most of my sort of like public communication for you know my identity was there it was mostly through twitter and facebook and they kind of mostly everywhere else i was pretty much anonymous just it was more kind of like yeah for safety uh you know for that purpose but i um but i didn't know your supervisor richard because um i had started a medical AI company a few years earlier and um medical imaging became our focus and histopathology was something we were interested in looking into and respect to richard because he was doing really interesting work there and then before my first chat to him one of my colleagues said like you know i think i read something about this guy something to do with pigeons and i like looked up richard lewinson pigeons and like oh my god he's he's taught pigeons to diagnose disease certainly histopathological slides it's just remarkable yeah he's like sometimes like to say AI stands for avian intelligence because of the pigeons because he i mean and he ended up the pigeons got roughly the same level of accuracy as yeah expert pathologists you see things like for example like use multiple pigeons and average out to predictions around it gets better it's like it's funny because like techniques an ensemble of pigeons yeah exactly an ensemble of pigeons i mean that's something so he's obviously okay so like based on the fact that a he attempted to replace human pathologists with pigeons and b he brought under his wing a kid to supervise on a phd he's obviously open-minded yes he is and all crazy or something yeah i think yeah he's um he's got unique ideas like ideas you know a lot of people don't tend to think about and um i think that's yeah and you can see that like with his career like he's got a very um different career right like his career was you know he did MD but he never like really was much of a practicing pathologist in fact or that he like a professor but then like after that he went into industry and he was actually working a lot in like hyperspectral cameras and stuff like that so he was doing a lot of optics actually right and then even you know at his time in these companies working in this field he actually started applying neural networks so like very basic you know perceptrons which is like the basic sort of neural networks like very basic that was he was already applying this must have been in like early 2000s so he has some he already had actually some you know machine learning experience from that side of things um so i mean but like you know he's got a very unique path through you know through you know doing math going through medical school and becoming you know this professor and then doing industry and eventually he was like you know he says like he got i guess he got called to join EC Davis and he just joined EC Davis.

So Tanishk what was it like when you met him? Um i mean he was certainly a very um he was a very uh interesting but very friendly character right he was like you know and he was like you know huge he had he has like the pigeon poster there and you know we have it in the hallway of our lab and so he's like showing that and he's showing of course the research and so you know you know he was very excited to show and then we just connected about other things too like he also was like he's got like in like a musical background so of course um he i think was also like in the San Francisco boys chorus just like i was you know yeah which we hadn't talked about right so yeah you're piano and choir right is your yeah i did i did choir when i was younger i played piano a bit and like when i was again really young then i think i just can't i i you have half of them i kind of stopped and like never really like pursued that any further i know that feeling yeah which i think my president like oh no like i mean you know we spent a lot of money on those things but like yeah i i remember when i was like 13 or something and i i said very earnestly to my mom like i want to stop doing piano lessons i've done them since i was like seven and she was like are you sure you know one day you might look back and regret that because it's like you know and i was like no i'm absolutely sure i have no interest and now i look back and i regret that i think not that i've told mom i wouldn't admit it to her unless she watches this but you know yeah um like parallel is like yeah something like i don't know like i guess like yeah i mean of course still know like base very basic stuff of course but like i don't like choir is something like i think i think now it's like at the time like yeah definitely i think i want to continue at the time so like i wasn't far from like maybe five years old to ten years old something like that so i was there for like five years or whatever um and i was so i was there for quite some time and um and so yeah i was i kind of wanted to continue but then the thing was i became a full-time student so i'm like a full-time student where i was taking you know i graduated high school and i went to community college now as a full-time student taking multiple classes per semester as opposed to standard two classes so it wasn't working because this is in you know san francisco and i live in sacramento and it was like a hour and a half drive up well you know both ways it's like three hours just driving and this is like two days a week so that's like six hours in a week is just got gone in and you know just you know in the car and you know that was so it was like there's a lot of time commitment you know even just the regular classes were like again like two hours and then the like if when you get closer to the actual concerts or like multiple rehearsals because like sevens voice courses like one of the top voice courses in the world right but actually like san francisco voice course and like the Vienna voice courses something like that like these are like top courses in like voice courses in the world so like they're very top-notch and very professional and so and actually i got a it's you know i actually got to sing like for example aisles are saying that the the national anthem at the giants game actually wow i had no idea yeah so even i i've sung the national anthem and also for the oakland so maybe you and your sister can swap some time and she can start doing the fast ai course and yeah but like so i an event like i think yeah that's kind of where my sister like became really passionate about music actually because she sometimes coming into a lot of my you know classes you know my my maybe you know my mom is driving me and she's taking my sister along and my sister really was like enjoying that she's like why can't i sing in the the chorus of like it's a voice chorus oh you can just so um um but then she became really passionate about music at that point i mean she's you know it's already kind of playing around with like singing like that she's not like why can't i train neural nets that's how she felt like that unfortunately i would be happy just like that but that's not no but um yeah so actually in a way like that kind of maybe jumps maybe helps with her you know interest in that so you know i think there's some benefit but um but then i think so like i was finished yeah as i went into community college i couldn't take this it was not working out in terms of the time commitment and stuff so i stopped but i at the time obviously as something i was pretty kind of i wasn't i was kind of sad about it but like i you know i definitely realized that you know like the community college is you know more important to me so you know that was a worthwhile sacrifice for me but like you know there was still like some aspect of it anyway so this was something you had in common with with richard yeah yes that was something i had in common um and then he also has like uh like he knew like i think he knows some of him he knew like relatives of like one of the these famous composers and stuff and he's just like a generally also like a musically minded person like goes to a lot of the concerts at UC Davis and things like that so we were just kind of connecting over that too and especially you know you know how my sister is also very interested in that kind of field and so was that like a pretty like did that all go pretty smoothly then like you guys connected and it's like okay this is obviously going to happen yeah a good connection and um so yeah i think at that point it was definitely something like yeah the funniest thing was like so he was talking about the cyclic ion research because like this is something like he was interested in pursuing already so this was like something like he's interested he was interested because i think i spoke to you guys pretty early on right because we were already interested in pursuing that yeah so that was like he was like already like let's do this and i remember we had a call and he was like oh you might know this guy he's you know from your community and i was like oh yeah i got to kind of yeah so so yeah immediately he was like already interested in psychodat stuff but it's kind of fine because like up to that point i was playing around with all this classification and segmentation or what these like different machine learning tasks um and then um but like these sort of generative tasks which is like what the psychogas stuff like i was yeah so psychogan is like a technique for taking an image and turning it into a different image exactly and that would be very useful in particular in pathology if you could take an image which is easy fast and cheap to acquire and turn it into an image which is slow and expensive and difficult to acquire but has like useful features for diagnosis whatever is that exact kind of idea basically yeah describe the research in a nutshell that i do yes um so but like those were techniques i hadn't played around with in the past and you know honestly i didn't at the time i didn't find it that interesting but then then i was like you know what i'll give it a try and still deep learning and it's still gonna be i think it'll still be fun so i i mean that's what i decided like i didn't i wasn't actually expecting to like really i wasn't sure if it's something i'd actually enjoy but like i figured like it's deep learning and this is like still very cutting edge and you know again the application is what matters to me the most i think you know that it has a useful application at the end so i i decided to give it a try and now i'm like really all over this sort of generative um these sorts of you know machine learning tasks and so that was kind of funny um but yeah like it like you mentioned like this was something we wanted to do early on so like you say you know this is a project that i'm interested in he had some other projects too but this was like the one i figured like okay i'm i'm gonna give this one a try there's like one other project that he also suggested and i gave that a try but then i i didn't find it as interesting so this is the one that i really pursued uh and then and then i think i saw like for example i think i so i saw i think the talk with jason antich at like facebook or something i think that so i just discovered he's we we're meant to pronounce his name jason antich by the way so even though i've been butchering it for the last few years so yes okay jason antich being you know another fast ai alum who's gone on to great things he started a startup based on exactly these kind of techniques but um in his case it was taking black and white photos and taking them into color photos yeah so like i saw that talking i was like wait this was something that we talked about like in the lesson right and i was like well this is something that maybe would work well here and like these are some of the techniques that i think we should examine in and study um so i brought that up to to my to my best doctor lennison and he was like oh i know jeremy i was like wait hodinson jeremy and it's like it turns out like he knows like a lot of people right so he knows like i think he knows you yeah he knows you he knows um like he knows daphne coleur oh yeah she's the one who's doing like also i think i think she's doing pathology stuff too now yes she was so she was involved in the computational pathologist seed path project stanford with andy beck well but i think the the startup that she's working on is still also um i think it's called in citro or something like that yeah that's right she ended up doing after after co-founding corsera she then founded a part of the thing at google's yeah yeah so she was you know she was so she you know it was kind of hard and he knows a lot of people in the field not just like in pathology but in deep learning and like in all these different fields i'm like wait yeah that's another that's another great thing about having you know the sort of pi he's very well connected which is also really nice to have like you know it's good to have or you know well connected and get you the resources that you need so like even you know of course like you know there are researchers who are you know the the leading researchers in the field so like he knows all the computational pathology researchers like pretty much all of them and so like so how old would you have been at that time when we were on that call together with richard yeah i mean like 15 maybe 14 15 yeah so so i mean like i um the thing i've really noticed about you tanish in the last four years um is like how much you've developed as a person um like really i mean you know what i think of you because i've actually said it publicly in the fast air course you know you're i think you're incredible like i mean obviously smart and hard working but also thoughtful and generous and kind and fair um yeah and you know i honestly when i was first chatting to you i kind of felt like you were pretty raw you know you were you you um you're you know nice enough guy and certainly smart and good to work with but i i i wouldn't have kind of put you up 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 really grown out as a person into somebody who's who's who's very special uh as very special human being um it like do you feel like you've been looking like that as i'm you know living my life so that's very interesting to hear for sure like yeah no it's quite striking for me uh you know and i and and interesting to like i you know whether it's like is it just you know there's actually a lot of years between being a 15 year old and a 19 year old but also like working you know on a doctorate you're you're part of a team and people are relying on you and you're having to navigate situations but not not as a precocious kid who's trying to force their way into things that hasn't been designed for them but as a colleague you know and um yeah so you know maybe there's just that that i don't know i don't know where i'm going with this but um i've been to hear what your thoughts are about the experience of like doing a phd and whether that was quite a yeah different experience to the before so actually this was back it's interesting you bring that up in terms of like being a kid who's like trying to do because like so like like even in bachelor's like at a certain point like people though most people don't realize like if they're meeting me for the first time they don't realize that i'm young like i mean oftentimes i'm not going to um mention that you 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 introduce especially because like directly related to research that's not obviously not how to do i mean even like yeah so even though i have bachelors i think like i've taken a couple classes where i went the entire class and no one knew you know anything about me and i was like that's fine i don't really care but like i think of course within the um within the actual my actual class of the the biomedical engineering batch or whatever um they all knew because you know that that news is going to spread up pretty quickly but outside of like you know taking other classes and stuff a lot of them didn't realize that i was so young and the same is true i think when i uh in my phd so yeah i mean i think like i think it was like i think yeah after like um basically like after 13 or 14 i think you know you don't really realize that you can if you look at me you don't realize that i think a lot of people don't realize i'm young i mean some people will still say you look kind of young and but they don't like you don't bring it up like oftentimes they'll bring it up until like sometimes maybe i might mention it in passing or something they're like wait you've been look you look young and you know that makes sense actually now like so uh but in my phd and i'm doing stuff you know most people don't realize my age i think there may be maybe a couple collaborators i don't know if they know my age or not like i never bring it up um and i just interact as i would um as a regular yes it's just a regular researcher i imagine that feels pretty good sorry i imagine that feels pretty good i mean you know because like it seems like you you had years of trying to prove that you deserve to be somewhere you know and kind of like and also like not really being able to quite do the same things in the same ways as everybody else um yeah that must be a real nice change yeah like yeah i felt yeah i definitely feel like um well i think there's still some i mean at this point it's like some of it is like um i do think like sometimes i worry if i'm like you know behind in terms of research uh output and things like that and still a concern that i do have i think i think it was i think it's less of concern now because like i'm seeing the end of the tunnel and i'm seeing like yeah i'm gonna get like you know a few papers and you know i've done like good research and but i think i mean i was beginning the the again beginning my phd and beginning the um in even that original phase in in dr lemonson's lab i was still kind of worried about that how's that research output gonna look like i mean those are all very normal phd reactions though it they are but also um yeah i don't well the other thing is like again you it just depends like yeah i think i think there's certainly a lot of like comparing to you know you compare to others and you kind of see it always seems like you know that's it's it's not the best thing to be doing but it's still like you know something that kind of naturally happens right like of course you know you should compare yourself to others you should be comparing yourself to yourself and yeah easy to say that's what that's what people say but it's still you know hard to you know practice what people are saying in terms yeah no i mean the people that say that probably don't practice so you know there's definitely still that aspect of things you know i'm seeing like my call you know my colleagues oh they've got like five ten papers like oh my gosh i only have like one or two and like the other thing is you know i'm definitely in this i'm in a different environment a lot of them have labs that you know have 10 20 people maybe you know even larger than that they're working a lot of collaborative projects in my case my lab was actually a very small lab actually i'm the only phd student in vol hab wow which is a very unique situation to be in um and what of and i'm actually uh dr ledinson's first phd student so we're actually operating at the same time so the phd you know process um so and then so you know there's it's a very good now you have quite a few papers to your name yeah i do have some papers so i'm i'm i'm definitely a little of you know proud proud of that and i'm seeing there and a book at least one book chapter that i'm aware of yes yeah that too which that was luckily something that you know i got that opportunity um you know shortly after i joined the lab so i was very happy about that um and so these sorts of opportunities definitely you know put my uh worries at rest um i mean you know still you kind of i still kind of worry about it once in a while but i definitely feel like i'm in a much better situation now um but you know apart from i mean yeah as you said those are probably regular phd worries but um yeah apart from that you know i'm definitely very satisfied i guess um the path that i've uh that i've been taking in terms of yeah the phd seems to be going all yeah it was like a regular phd and yeah the thing was except for the fact that you you know now also have a job um a very interesting and exciting job um yeah i i guess we're like i just i wanted to kind of ask like i just wanted to reach up one other thing yeah please i was going to say like but i really enjoy you know of course doing this sort of computational research right like it's very it works i think that's something that you know for the longest time i tried to do this sort of hands-on research and i guess that's just something that you know just doesn't maybe work as well for me but then the computational stuff it's very flexible um you know but i you know i just i can still get a lot of my work done wherever i am and it's really nice you know especially you know during the pandemic you know all the other students they couldn't complete any of their research and they just got down right so but i managed to still you know continue with my research actually absolutely but also like computational work like you you know you we create stuff that didn't previously exist out of raw code you know and we can create lots of things and we can try them and we can compare them and it's like such a act of creation you know and creating things is just magnificent but i'd like let's see it's that's how i feel about it yeah it's again like i think it's always good to like get external perspective on these sort of things because like you know as i do the research like you know it just feels like oh is this the 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 like you know analyzing the results it's like oh this is not perfect and like this is issues here and this issue is there and like oh i get to figure out how to improve it but then i like this there's this project i'm working on i'm working on with some collaborators and i'm showing these results to the collaborators and they're like this is this is amazing and this is like stuff that wasn't possible before and like this is like you know you couldn't you couldn't you couldn't really get you know these sorts of images ever right like because this collaborator that we're working with and it's like actually doing in vivo imaging or kind of like that's not necessarily in vivo it's like during a surgery doing imaging and stuff like that and it's like you know getting the same sorts of images that you get with the standard pathology workflow and doing that sort of conversion like you mentioned going down this cheap and easy approach that you can do um within the surgery to this more expensive knowledge that you could ever do within a surgery and i mean it's nice for me because i you know as you know was somewhat accidentally doing similar things to you but at the Salk Institute you know again kind of microscopy imagery construction stuff and yeah same thing like the folks that we worked with took that work and literally met a brain connectome you know as just like wow that's you know nobody's ever seen that before yeah so it's like that kind of aspect like yeah and take a step back and like damn no one has been able to do this before or like you know no one has seen this sort of thing before right then then especially when you hear that external input and feedback from people then you kind of realize it but you know on a day-to-day basis it's it's hard to kind of hit well it is because particularly on a day-to-day basis training deep learning models is extremely tedious and frustrating at least it is for me it's no it is frustrating and tedious and i and then also a lot of the work i do is like image like working with images and like you know you know so like this sort of approach that i take with the research and i think this is again an approach that dr lemonson has also like really pushed for is you know kind of focused on the data and like you know he always likes to say garbage in garbage out which is a common thing though you know there's a lot of focus on the data and making sure the data is the best quality and so a lot of my work also involves working with the data and just analyzing the data and you know cleaning up the data things like that and so that's a lot of tedious work in that aspect of things as well um so um yeah there's definitely a lot of tedious work that goes into it and sometimes you know sometimes it's not as maybe flashy as you know inventing a new method all together and things like that but it still has a you know um a useful impact and you know has a useful application at the end so yeah i think that definitely motivates me that you know you you do get something that you know could have a difference um and you know that doesn't necessarily need to be with flashy new architectures it can be with you know sometimes boring architectures um like the psychogand is actually a very old architecture but it works surprisingly well uh you know especially give it the right data um and so those are the sorts of things it's like you know giving it the right data what other picks can we use things like pre-training stuff like that yeah um sorry these i should not afford them you know um you know saying but and what's like um i kind of like you know curious thinking as a parent what what's what's kind of like you know your your parents particularly your mom you know we're heavily involved in teaching you stuff and your mom was there at a community college you know during the theology with you whatever um have you been like taking them along for the ride like do they know what psychogans are and stuff like that are they like or how much are they telling them about what's about you know your research yeah i i mean i i talked to them about it um so i mean they definitely have an idea i don't think they maybe fully understand the nitty gritty details um but you know sometimes they'll joke oh oh you talk about it but psychogans and um you know all the thought you know all the different words that i you know talking about my research and like for them they'll uh they'll be um you know sometimes joking about it but you know it's probably easier for them to appreciate your sister's work than your work i guess yeah that's definitely true uh that isn't good point yes no i think that is definitely uh very true um yeah that's that's yeah um but then like i mean i still like also practice sometimes my presentations with you know with my parents like like some of them will still practice like um yeah like i'm like i've done that since i was very young and i still do that of and um that so they certainly have an understanding of kind of the general ideas of my research but not of course of the nitty gritty details but um yeah i think they are also kind of amazed and you know i also they of course gave a lot of the sort of external feedback you know that they're 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 like okay maybe maybe it is kind of interesting but like i feel like this is like normal and like and sometimes i'm also feel like i'm not doing enough right like i want to do more and i always want to do more but they're like you've done a lot already and it's like yeah sometimes it's nice then to hear that and then then kind of take that step back and kind of realize yeah and if you've been talking to them about like your have you been talking to them about like you know like joining stability and like you know i mean i talk to them about all these things like everything i'm involved in and they they're there to provide you know a lot of advice and feet and support and 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 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 much as possible if i can um so yeah so they're very you know proud and excited of what i'm doing at stability as well um and you know they've been you know they've also yeah they yeah they're just also very excited as well so like are you kind of like almost at a at a new stage now like it feels like like from what i've heard you say both in interviews when you were younger and today and chatting to you like you had this long-running dream you know of like medical biological research get a phd and in March or whenever that that will be done does that feel like kind of like completing a certain stage of your life you know and like and like did you always have dreams about what happens after that or are you now kind of like moving into uncharted territory or how does that feel so so i don't know like you know i've definitely mentioned in the past that i want to um go to medical school right and then that was like something like that's something i'm still so the reason of course i'm one of the medical school is to make an impact with medical research and still in that avenue but i've been thinking you know i've kind of think about that and if that's something i want to still do and i think i've been kind of like talking to people about that now so like i mean i'm certainly going to take like a couple years off i think you know one or two years definitely like as it is a break but if i if i am going to go to medical school yeah you made a couple of years off study exactly yeah because then you get a medical school again another like um you know it's a lot of memorizing and more more studying and you know i've done that for i don't know for a very long time and also medical school is very specifically you know like in a lot of ways it is a trade school you know which is teaching the trade of being a doctor which is not really what you're trying to do yeah it's i mean i i guess the thing is i guess part of me believes that like that is really important skill to have if you want to kind of maybe understand you know what things need improvement and need change in in in the field and i think it's also like like the way i've always thought about it was like if you find a practicing doctor then i get to have more hands-on experiences with patients and understand better the sort of challenges that patients are facing um but then of course there's also that aspect like maybe you don't need to do that you can just talk to doctors and talk to patients and maybe that's not a requirement so i'm still trying to figure out maybe what is that yeah what is it almost reminds me of like me now being a homeschooling dad and trying to learn about teaching and i spend dozens and dozens and dozens of hours listening to interviews with teachers and like i hear them describing their challenges and frustrations and processes and whatever and yeah it's not the same as going to you know to school to learn to be a teacher and then practicing being a teacher but the difference you know in terms of like percentages like one percent of the works or 50 percent of the upside or something i don't know again i think the difference is you're still doing the teaching right you're doing the teaching with your daughter right that's true i am you're still having a hands-on experience and you have that experience to kind of learn from yeah and i guess i have more expertise in teaching my daughter than anybody else in the world exactly right and so well yeah like i was saying like yeah i think um i mean as you said that you know you are of course the expert in in teaching your daughter and i think like to a certain extent you know doctors are the expert in you know creating their patients um i so i i think there is value potentially in in um going to medical school and becoming a doctor there may also be valuing going to medical school and not necessarily becoming a doctor but still that process of going to a medical school i've seen people who've done that and they they seem to uh you know make a huge impact i think recently i heard a talk by someone from stanford who did that sort of process and he was he's he's done um uh you know he went through medical school and then he went into industry and you know in the form of several startups um you know creating medical devices and getting into clinic and he's now a professor at stanford uh teaching those sorts of same principles but like you know he clearly got a lot of value also out in his that medical knowledge um so i think so yeah i guess you know it's something i'm trying to explore right now and figure out what is the best path um and then similarly it is also something i have to figure out what to do right after i you know finish my phd because uh the medical school stuff is you know a couple years down the line but the ph you know after phd is just six months down the line so i'm trying to figure that out right now too yeah so i had you know so what's the kind of like sorry what's the what's the north star or whatever that's what that's that's guiding you in these thoughts what does you know what where do you want to be in 10 years or 20 years or 40 years yeah um it's yeah it's not like it's certainly true like i think like you know it was that's something and kind of like i mean i i just want to be able to um to make an impact right so i think this part of it is like you know getting something to the clinic is kind of my goal and in life just having something that mom you know it's something that's helping people to not be sick is that exactly yeah so um i think there's many paths to that um so it's just like what may be the best path for for me uh personally um there's of course you know academia which has its advantages but also many disadvantages um there's of course industry again there's a lot of you know again this is a similar situation there's still disadvantages and advantages with industry so it's kind of weighing those up those yeah i mean i think if i could like add my perspective because in a sense my question is not quite fair because i feel like it's like asking somebody what their favorite color is you know we don't actually necessarily have a favorite color and when you're younger i think a lot of us do as kids have like what do you want to be when you grow up you know but actually at least for me i got to a point where i what i really want to do is capture opportunities as they come along and like you know from time you know from moment to moment be living my best life with an overarching thesis you know and my thesis is very much about like kind of accessibility and fairness and you know opportunities for everybody and lack of gatekeeping and then you know i think about like well what you know where are my skills and what can i do at the moment and you know so like yeah as i mentioned i don't you know don't feel like you have to yeah you don't have some 20 year plan opportunities that you have you want to catch right because like stability is kind of like one of those opportunities because yes exactly like and like i didn't know existed a year ago i didn't and it's kind of funny like a year ago so stability ai is a company which it's just raised about a hundred million dollars and it's basically doing exactly what you and i have been talking about with our research generative modeling so it's creating images sounds texts whatever that didn't previously exist or or or reconstructing those things in interesting ways using deep learning um yeah and the um ceo is an ex hedge fund guy named emad um who's you know in the papers and new york times podcast and whatever else and um yeah i mean so how did you find yourself with stability ai did you reach out to him did he reach out to you or yeah so like yeah again so yeah it's just to kind of say like how i knew about stability ai like i didn't know about stability ai like say a year ago i had seen a couple of things about it i think i think for example um uh at from crowson who's like one of the leading researchers in in this field of ai art and yeah she's amazing image generation and stuff like that i saw like she was like getting getting supported by stability ai and that was like the only thing i've seen about stability ai basically and like entire online presence at the time this is like january of 2021 uh 2022 so like yeah basically the beginning of this year and there was a part of that there's like no online presence of this company um but emad yeah emad was like in the um in the discord servers so um you know there's one of the discord servers which is eluther ai this is again one of these sorts of so this is a popular text chat system yeah so yeah this this this is kind of a um you know the discord server was mostly focused on you know the deep learning research um that eluther ai is known for some of their sorts of um they have generated like developed some of these sorts of um open source versions or kind of replications of models like gpt3 and things like that like these sorts of again generative models but this was more focused on text instead of images so they have done like actual solid research and i think some of the data sets that they've created data sets and i think these data sets are actually used by a lot of these industry labs and things like that even now um so i was you know i've been i've been hanging around in that server you know you know talking about research and other sorts of things um and so i think at this at this point um i was specifically looking for uh for gpu resources oh and actually um it's funny that i mentioned that because we never actually talked about um you know the sort of support that you know was given to what you weren't provided actually right um because originally a lot of my research was provided uh the support in terms of like compute resources and gpu resources and also some expertise was provided through this organization that jeremy leads bamri uh he was at he led this at uh uesf and so actually that was kind of when when we met um with uh dr leminson you know uh talking about research that was kind of the outcome of that meeting in terms of me working with bamri i have an idea about that by the way which i'll talk to you about after our interview perhaps yeah that would be great to talk about but anyway so you know i got a lot of support from there in terms of compute resources and gps because that's of course a you know a huge limiting factor in terms of ai research um but if you still yeah the computers are expensive yeah gps are expensive but even if you have like you know a few good gps you can still do a lot of great research i mean i'm not like using thousands of gps actually in my own research i'm just using a few gps there's still like high-end gps and so some people my final is like a very but it's still like nothing compared to like the thousands of gps used to create these huge models but i think um so yeah i got some of that support through bamri they were providing those resources and i also worked with some great people there uh andrew shaw who was again i think he's also the fast ci alumnus um and also uh uh daniel o'connor he was a professor at usf um and so i was working with them and you know that was that was a very great collaboration but then unfortunately um you know the bamri i guess erasement kind of had to shut down um so then i was then i had i was able to find another like a short-term grant for a few months and and then that lasted till january and so now i still need resources for compute to complete my research research so i kind of just like message in the chat 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 of like a general message or something like that and then he just like you know replies he replies with like a single wave emoji and he was like and i'm like oh hello what what are you why are you waving is there something that you can help out with and it was like yeah we can provide gps and he was and then and so then we started dm'ing and he was talking about stability ai and what the goals were and he was um um you know he said that he can provide gps for for research and also he even offered to then support my own research and you know provide a fellowship and because he said like he was any he's that's something that a program that he was starting is you know providing these phd fellowships to uh to you know researchers in ai so um i was one of the first apple one of the first uh um for folks to receive that fellowship i think i was i think it was actually um and so he provided that to me as well and so this was you know back in like january february or so and so since then i've actually you know been kind of involved in like you know going knowing what's going on and like kind of helping out here and there not officially an employee but you know getting support now through the to the you know through the compute but then also through the um uh you know you know through the fellowship but of course the fellowship was specifically for my for my phd and you know those stuff um and so since then i've you know been involved and i knew like some things were happening and i was like oh this kind of cool like what's going on here and and you know the whole stable diffusion stuff started happening and picking up and this was like by then it was like july and august and it was like you know what i think i might want to join this company and help out and and actually be part of this um yeah so and yeah so that i'd join in in i think august september yeah it's definitely history being made in real time yeah yeah so it was very exciting because like yeah he's the kind of guy who's like like and you know he's very like um down to earth in terms of like you know it's not like he's like a you know uh you know you think like he's an ex hedge fund manager and he's like oh like you know he's the ceo this big company like kind of like nowadays it's like you know big company you know he's getting interviews by all these people you know you don't really like he's like still praying down to earth and like talks to him to everyone and you know he's interested he's very active in some of his discord servers and will talk to folks about stuff and like so you know that's how i first interacted with what server and then it's kind of kind of interesting to see everything kind of play out and you know my you know my involvement in that as well so it's it's very exciting and i'm very lucky to to have discovered this and be supported by him as well and by stability ai so yeah very um let me ask you something at a more meta level which is um you know it's it's interesting that you mentioned that you know as a very young child you know you had an iq test and you performed highly on that and you know so obviously this intelligence thing going on um but like interestingly from my point of view in working with you i wouldn't say the thing that most stands out is like wow he's way smarter than everybody but actually wow your i don't know if exactly work ethic's the right word but your your your way of working is better than most people i work with like you reliably tend to follow through on the things that you say you're going to do at more or less the time you say you're going to do them you generally speaking don't express opinions about things with which you're unfamiliar but and when there's a paper or whatever that comes out you actually read it before you start talking about like these are all things that sound normal and obvious but they're not at all you know like very few people actually read the papers and very few people actually do the things that they say they're going to do at about this time they say they're going to do them um and like i really um enjoy that about working with you because i feel like i can actually have you know sensible conversations that are fact-based and are going to have follow-up and yeah so it's kind of interesting to me that you're clearly a bit of an outlier on two axes that don't necessarily correlate you know which is something about kind of you know hard work and reliability and and not no bullshit you know as well as intellect so like where does that kind of you know getting things done and actually doing the reading and uh or you know the fact that you have this like paper reading group and you make sure it happens each week and you make sure that there's somebody to present and you like it it's again it's not rocket science but as somebody i'm normally the person who organizes things because nobody else does so it's nice for me to discover somebody else in the world who actually does things reliably as well yeah i don't know like where do you feel like this is coming from is this something you've worked hard to make happen or is this just natural to you or well first of all i've i personally personally i feel like i'm not like a hugely organized person so like it's kind of interesting to hear that to be honest i mean i'm not either but like it's just a case of like just doing the things you say you're going to do you don't have to be terribly looking like this you just totally flake out you know i think i don't know like the thing is like also i feel like sometimes like you know there's like like when you say what do you mean by like doing what you say you do because like i guess maybe yeah because like okay so for example you say okay we're going to have a paper club it's going to be each week this is the time it's going to be you know well that actually happens you know and and you you know or you say like i say like oh i want to interview you for a podcast and you're like okay what time is it going to be and you you are there at that time and you make sure i don't know like i mean i think i brought a couple times but it's like it's follow through and and definitely the papers thing it's like not many people read the papers really but somehow still have opinions because of like something they read on twitter or something and you tend to be like okay yeah i read the paper in this section i saw this thing um i don't know i think you're i think you're reliable and um and authentic and honest and because like oftentimes like um like a lot of projects like you know i i feel like like there's like i have a lot of projects right like there's so many projects and sometimes projects kind of you know slip slip my mind or you know just kind of you know sort of they just become less priority so like for that reason oftentimes i feel like maybe i'm kind of flaky in certain aspects but so that's what like when i wasn't when i was i haven't experienced that so maybe that's just okay i'm just revealing my 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 that's part of prioritization i think the key thing is the things that you it's not so much that you let them slip but you make a conscious decision to deprioritize them and that you clearly communicate that to the people involved that this is not something i can work on right now i haven't always been good at that myself but it's something i want to be good at yeah so yeah when you were having when you're talking about like flaking and stuff like that i thought maybe that's what you're talking about i was like no i'm not i'm very bad at that kind of stuff but in terms of like things like yeah paper reading groups and stuff like that i think part of it is like like i guess there's like some aspect of it that's more like um forcing myself to like have some accountability i guess or something like that whereas like how do you do that paper reading group there are people there you know i'm you know there's some expectation to have something for them so it was that i think there's kind of that sort of aspect of things so by publicly stating this is going to happen you're exact requiring yourself to follow through exactly i think that's kind of what happens i got another hypothesis that i think might be related which is i think well i mean clearly you're somebody who just genuinely loves learning um and i am as well you know i really very much am but i'm not sure like it's that common to love learning as much as we do you know like i there's almost nothing i i mean i would rather spend time with my daughter than anything else but other than that like that i just want to learn things and i guess when that gives you a lot of joy you put time into it um yes i think there's certainly some of that but in terms of like yeah i think a lot of i think a lot of it like in terms of the paper reading group yes i was like i know i was like yeah that was that's an example they're like well i think the thing was like especially i created like the paper reading group like some was like maybe you should have a diffusion model paper that's so yeah just to explain it's like again a paper reading group that i i am hosting like every week and it's about these sorts of uh image generation models you know they're called diffusion models it's like the the mean this is the new form whether or not those old-fashioned cycle games some people still talk about um so i had someone was saying yeah we should have this study group and i was like sure i'll do it um and the reason i decided to do it was because i felt like this is a good way to force me to actually read a lot of these papers and on otherwise it is tough to to read you know papers and you know when there's so many you know there's still much to do and there's just a lot a lot you know there's um you know and there's so many papers to read so i figured you know this is this is just a good opportunity to kind of force myself to to dig into the literature more um so i think part of it was just like yeah um just giving you know kind of you know making these situations where i'm forced to you know how this public accountability and get the get the work done and so like that's what like just generally in terms of like you know research and stuff like that too like i have often meetings with my professors uh with my advisor dr leminson you know i have like a meeting at least once a week sometimes twice or even three times a week um because you know then it's like some form of accountability like okay i have to have something to show to my to my advisor and so how so i'll you know be able to do some experiments and show that um so it's just really helpful and especially as i'm the kind of person that tends to uh procrastinate a lot actually and i don't think most people realize that um no it's actually you know i tend to i am uh you know you know it's so funny because like it's interesting you say that because like i feel the same way about myself and yet i'm somebody who like is on the other end of this almost this exact question which is people are like how do you get so much work done and i was thinking like that question people ask me too and i'm like like i've gotten this question asked many uh you know several times and i'm like i cannot honestly i'm surprised i'm able to do this as well like i probably shouldn't be asking you the question that i can never answer for myself it's like it's like i'm always telling people like how i don't like if i was if i were better at high management and stuff like that a couple would accomplish so much more so like so it's like so there's definitely that aspect of things so like you know also having the accountability definitely helps like at least it will get done i'm still gonna probably procrastinate a little bit so like even like a lot of these um you know this paper reading group i'm like preparing it like the night of tour and so like i'm so the thing is like yeah i'm meant to be presenting it tomorrow's paper reading group and i have not prepared anything at this point maybe we should give you some time to do so um helping it yeah but the thing is like i've noticed like i think i realized like okay so like i tend to like i i do realize i tend to have like a faster um comprehension in terms of like i can read some paper and like understand it fairly quickly um and i know a lot of people tend to struggle with that and like like a lot of things i can read i mean read it and i can uh you know understand it very quickly and so that's how like like even with my procrastination i'm somehow able to manage it's not it's not the best situation to be in to be honest like somehow able to you know i've managed because like i can still pick up like so i think if in terms of like um like overall so like i'd overall tell people like what i like what i tell is like i'm certainly like i i will admit that you know i'm kind of above average right is it some something that you know i will say i'm i'm not the kind of person who likes to brag about these sorts of things but i will admit like you know maybe i'm you know i'm somewhat above average um of course um and i think that what i'm the what the main one of course i think the main things that i'm i'm pretty good at would be things like memory in terms of like quickly memorizing stuff and comprehension so i think those two things really help in terms of this sort of quick learning and you know these sorts of stuff but then i'd also say like and before i move on from the topic of you know being above average or whatever i think a lot of what i've been able to do is of course prove hard work and i think this goes back to your point about work ethic and stuff like this um you know the only way i've reached this level is mostly through uh hard work i i don't i don't think this would be possible if i was just you know if i didn't put any hard work into it it's like a combination of either definitely having some of those talents but then also putting in a lot of hard work and a lot of you know swearing and the sweat and blood and tears into this and you know you know you know working at it for for you know a long long time and so that's definitely that sort of work ethic is definitely something i mean the tinesity seems critical you know andrea yeah i yeah i think so i think um yeah so i i think also that's something i've you know definitely learned from you know my parents and i think they've kind of brought me up in that sort of you know those sorts of values in terms of hard work and like you know never taking these sorts of things you know these sorts of talents for granted and you know putting in the hard work that is necessary um so that's everything like people like oh you must be so you're still smart and everything must come easy to you um there's certainly some aspect that you know there's some comprehensive stuff that does come easy but a lot of it is still hard work that i have to still put effort into so it's not like everything comes easy to me um just you know you know automatically there's still some aspect that you know there's a lot of work that goes into it um yeah that's like something like that's sometimes kind of you know irritates me oh you're you know everything must be so easy for you and it's like no it's not it's like yeah exactly yeah you know in certain aspects i'm still you know like there's still like work you have to do it's like it's not like you can avoid doing this stuff you just can't avoid right you have to like put in the effort to to finish your homework problems to to um you know write your essays to you know whatever projects you're working on you still have to put in the effort on and so i know that's that's something that i and like even although like okay for you you're saying you you seem to pick it up a bit faster than other people but you're still starting with something that you didn't previously know and that at first you don't understand and then you have to struggle through and develop that understanding and then practice and exactly yeah i mean i say like even picking it up quickly i mean that's just to say like i can pick up you know you know the first like let's say if your best comprehension of the material is 100 you know you can pick up maybe the first you know 70 i can pick that up pretty quickly but then you don't even get that remaining 30 and you still have to put in put in the work right so it's more of like you know i definitely am able to get a very kind of a general gist and grasp of what's going on in a particular field or a particular paper or whatever but obviously if you want to you know truly understand it you do have to put in more work so like you know especially with this field of like diffusion models and stuff you know um you know i've been that even some of the original papers i still will go back and read like i mean i understand the general gist but there's still certain aspects that you want to like really you know to fully understand that those papers have to fully understand that field you know there's still certain parts that i still am studying um and then of course there's other aspects of it in terms of putting it into practice like you know in the case of these models and these sorts of deep and deep learning in general you have to code it up and you have to actually experiment and try it out and so you know there's also that aspect of things that also helps solidify your knowledge and there's really no way around that instead of except you have to do that so there's no way around those sorts of things and you know that provides you know this sort of different knowledge that you can't get anywhere else you have to do yeah yeah it is it is it's hard work and it um it's difficult and like i feel like that's the biggest difference i see between people i know that are extremely effective and those who are less effective is the people who keep doing it like for me personally i actually don't find i pick things up faster than most people but i seem to stick with things longer than most people and i also seem to be more like prepared to keep digging and digging you know it's like yesterday when we were chatting in our little study group and i asked about a paper that actually is extremely basic and i was like i don't think i fully understand this yet and i probably ought to and yeah just really took the time to get at it dig through it which in some ways it requires putting aside the embarrassment of saying like i don't fully understand this fairly basic paper yeah yeah but now i feel like i probably understand it better than a lot of people do having taken that time with you guys to dig into it carefully and going back into like yeah like understanding stuff like obviously um teach of course teaching this material really like like i guess this is like the was the Feynman Feynman technique right the Feynman technique is not you know try to teach it to other people and make and that also really helps um so like especially with this sort of diffusion model stuff like you know i've just been practicing in so many different ways right just through that in the term of teaching this material through the study group through like the study group that i host and then of course you know the sort of study groups that we have together um and then yeah well as we were saying yesterday when when we were chatting in our group it's like we're learning ourselves diffusion modeling through diffusion processes of like doing it again and again in a thousand different ways until eventually yeah makes it way into our brain yeah and so you know i have that you know that study group these two study groups then you know um you know this sort of uh you know writing it out in code and teaching try to teach it in a different way not just like from the paper but from the code and then like also like like i recently had this twitter thread and it's like you know that's a that was a different experience it's like how do i teach it in a you know we're in in those limitations of twitter it's like an entirely different uh kind of a thought process so and then i know i've just kind of written down you know in just different ways of explaining the same concept you know because i i kind of actually really want to you know you know understand diffusion models and kind of be actually an expert in that field to be honest so i just been trying to like really dive deep in that for you know i've been doing that for several months now and through all of these different you know platforms so i i think like and so like overall teaching it's something that actually in general i'm kind of passionate about um and it's but it's something like i don't know like again how good i am at it it's something that i'm i feel like i'm still trying to you know get better at especially i think we you know we've talked about this before it's like something that you know i you know myself i'm a person kind of like you know being at the plant person who grasps things fairly quickly or again as i talked about grasp you know the first 70 80 fairly quickly and you can get to that level quickly compared to other people um it's harder for me to like figure out like what exactly are the the the weak points or the sort of you know that makes teaching more difficult for you than other people right so um so that that's something that you know can be tough but um again i try to get a lot of external feedback when when talking about these sort of things to figure that out um but that's something but like i really enjoy teaching and you know that's another thing like that's another thing like going back to i keep changing topics here but like going back to like you know the you know careers and things like academia and stuff like that right like academia is another great opportunity to like you know it's a it's it is a good opportunity to teach and also i mean it should be ideal right it's like it's teaching and doing research but sadly the structure of academia is a bit of a nightmare yeah it it turns out like um activity is weird because like it's teaching and research but the environment doesn't or like the sort of problem you know bureaucratic processes or administration does not or like whatever it is it does not select for the best teachers and researchers right it's it's it mostly selects for like the best researchers then of course those are like the when you say best features there's still like the researchers would get the most grants or whatever they still link you know there's still probably lots of great researchers work you know to get those opportunities and stuff anyway that's kind of a whole diversion but like in terms of like even academia i've had very bad professors but then they're like amazing researchers in terms of like they've got a lot of grants and they've got a lot of papers and stuff and that's the reason they they they're stuck they they stick around at these universities and they get high you know high pay from these universities it's because um they're good you know they have good research labs but they are terrible at teaching um but unfortunately and unfortunately some of them just don't care about improving their quality of teaching um but i think that even in academia you do have at least like for someone who's interested in both teaching and research it does seem like a like a good place to be in and yeah so that's why like even even though i do know a lot of the disadvantages of academia i think there's also still some advantages for the source of things that i'm interested in you know that being teaching and research so that's why i'm still you know highly considering that as a potential pathway but yeah i'm just overall like also really excited about teaching and educational content um and i'm hoping i'm doing i'm doing yeah i hope it's going well and if people are getting i mean teaching is itself a whole you know research field yeah that one can study and yeah there's a lot of valuable research and how people learn and what teaching works well and yeah it's a really interesting field and i've mainly been studying it when really well well mainly been studying it for teaching my daughter but i studied a little bit before that the fastai courses but not right nearly as much as i do now yeah i mean i i definitely think the fastai approach of like this sort of top down something i can't hear you oh no you're back oh sorry did something has to be at all yeah just your top just have disappeared for five seconds okay anyway i was just saying um yeah i was saying that like i think i definitely think like the fastai approach of this top down and followed by the bottom up is really like a very yeah i don't know it's 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 sort of like material that i mean yeah it it's just like yeah it's definitely a hard thing to do like as a teacher right it's like hard to prepare that sort of material very hard as a teacher you kind of think about it from like you want to start from the foundations and work your way up and it's kind of hard to you know like change that kind of also we haven't seen many role models of teaching technical content top down so we haven't experienced what that looks like very often yeah yeah so it's you know and and but yeah i mean it definitely does say something that like someone like me who generally does start from the sort of bottom up approach and you know does fairly well with that bottom up approach and even then i'm getting a lot out of the sort of top down approach that's cool 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 of people you know struggle with the bottom up approach and that's why i do it yeah even as someone who does well with the the bottom up approach i think even then the top down approach is is very helpful often oh that's really cool oh that that's yeah i don't know where i was going with this to be honest yeah that's fine i'm very interested in your thoughts um yeah all right i think we should consider wrapping things up um depending on like um whether there's things either life things or work things or thoughts you have that we haven't covered and you'd be interested in chatting about that thing comes to mind i guess um yeah i mean i don't know like yeah whether on stage or i guess did it i just wrote maybe there were other really misconceptions about foul prodigies oh i would love to hear about that if the yeah well i know i know we discussed this before in terms of like um you know we this is again kind of random like we discussed it before but like child prodigies they tend to be i mean of course even this interview we talked a little bit about like you know child priorities tend to be you know sort of considered socially outcast things like that and we talked about that but then also like you know things like you know they tend to be considered oh maybe they're autistic and those sorts of um aspects of things um and i mean i just i just kind of like i mean i tell this to people like even in other interviews and in other places and when people ask me it's like yeah i think i'm fairly normal right like i think you're fairly normal yeah whatever it's said yeah um um and i mean we've had literally that with our daughter sometimes yeah not that often not that unusually people literally ask like oh does she have some sort of like i'm like oh she's quite advanced at school oh does she have social problems yeah like no and they don't even like they don't even almost seem to believe me they keep talking as if she asked just because she's doing well at school i mean there's there's like i think some you know um research into like you know yeah the sort of um coincidence like yeah the sort of thing where like you know both you know people who are smart and you know they tend to have autism and these sorts of yeah true is the term that tends to get used uh twice exceptional oh okay yeah um and so there's that so then i think yeah there's there is some correlation but yeah it's nowhere near 100 you know yeah exactly um if i remember correctly at one point like someone was like i think there's like some research and they're like um so where was i oh yeah i was saying like i think at one point like there were some folks who were interested and i think researchers in talking to us and things like that and studying us but then they were like then they heard we're not autistic or something like this and they're like oh we're not interested anymore we're interested more studying the you know the autistic part of things and um so um yeah i mean there's just generally this sort of like i think um just overall sort of stereotypes about about topologies and you know hopefully uh i'm you know as i've lived my life i think i kind of had um went against those stereotypes and yeah well in stereotypes are a lazy cognitive shortcut you know so it's very tempting and easy for people to put people into a bucket and then assign a whole bunch of things to them based on assumed group characteristics but yeah that prejudice is never good because no groups of humans are you know so identical hopefully these sorts of experiences that people see and and hopefully uh i mean yes as you said like yeah people are very complex and diverse and it's not this you know the stereotypes are not always applicable um and so yeah i think people should be more open to that uh-huh yeah and then just generally i think i was just going to make some general points of like yeah obviously um hard like like we mentioned this before you know hard work is always important um and then of course at least i'm the kind of person who who's very goal oriented i don't know if that works for everyone but for me it's always i've always thought it's useful to have a goal in mind and you know work towards that goal um at least that's how it's worth me and honestly i recommend people to at least explore that as a as something 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 have this a very supportive family um and i guess if there's any any parents or any folks like that who are listening i just would recommend to you know keep keep you know try you know whatever you can do to you know of course support your your children and because you never know what what could come out of it um and and more specifically i think like i would say support your children in terms of what they're telling you they want rather than what you think they ought to want yeah i was gonna say like don't push them in in terms of like yeah like i was never pushed which is which is a good thing honestly it's i forgot to mention is like there are many times in my parents like maybe you're pushing yourself too much and it's like honestly there's also that aspect of things like also you know there's also needs to be sometimes trying to have those breaks i guess um which is like which you know in this case my my my parents are the ones who kind of provide that i think um they they if any yeah they never have really pushed me and everything they were like if anything they they want me to slow down a bit i think um so i think um yeah you don't want to push your in yeah children yeah never really should be pushed but they should be supported in what they're interested in and what they're passionate about and of course like what you're passionate about interested can change over time but you know you just kind of whatever it is it's worth supporting it um and so luckily you know i've i've had all of that thanks to my parents and my family um you know so i mean yeah not just my parents of course even my sister you know is supportive you know comes comes along to to to all these classes and weights there and things like that and you know even i'm i try to be supportive with her go to all of her performances and things like that so you know that's also good that we're lucky to have that sort of family unit that's very supportive of each other yeah so um yeah so yeah that's mainly it and of course if you're interested in following me you like follow me on twitter and stuff you know i'm you know i'm mostly on twitter and you know we'll see i plan to i'm interested in maybe expanding from just twitter you know for for various reasons i bet but but i mean i really love twitter as a part of her in general um yeah and i've met a lot of amazing people there so i want to take on you know stick to twitter as much as possible but also i think some diversification is still also good in general right like you know they say that about like finance and they said about a lot of things you know being able to apply it and so i think that's probably also true in terms of my my social media and my personal brand probably yeah well tanish this has been an absolute pleasure and absolutely fascinating and i feel very very privileged to have you as our first guest on this podcast this amazing story and such thoughtful comments um i'm really grateful and uh at all this time so late at night thank you so much yeah i don't know people if people were watching don't realize that i'm i tend to be a night owl so this is totally fine for me what is the time for you now it is let's see well it's it's right now three o'clock but three o'clock in the morning okay well yeah but it's not it's not too bad it isn't well totally fine um yeah but yeah i'm adverse you know this was a great experience and i'm extremely honored to also be your first guest i think that's um it's interesting to it's yeah it's an honor to kind of start you out with this this new podcast and i'm sure this podcast will be uh you know extremely successful so i i'm it yeah i'm kind of you know honored to be that the first game that's crossed you out thanks mate Awesome.

Appreciate it. Okay. Thank you. Bye. Bye Bye.