Fall 2023 was my first semester as a PhD student at MIT. I would like to briefly reflect on my past semester in several aspects.

Courses: I took two courses past semester – Introduction to Modeling and Simulation, and Theory of Computation. Although courses are not the main focus of the PhD program, I found both of the courses instructive. This spring, I am taking Advances in Computer Vision. Next semester, I plan to take NLP.

Research: I started working in Tegmark AI Safety group, advised by Professor Max Tegmark. I’ve been really enjoying exploring the field of Mechanistic Interpretability, especially as a student who used to enjoy studying physics – this research area really resembles how physics research is done, i.e., we try to understand and interpret what’s going on inside the large-scale neural network models by designing systematic experiments for probing them. My current goal is to submit two papers (and hopefully get them accepted!) to the upcoming NeurIPS deadline in May.

Life: I had so much fun meeting new friends and hanging out here in Boston! Orientation boat cruise, EECS Gala, Thanksgiving party, and Gimme Gimme Disco, to name a few. I am extremely grateful to my friends, for navigating the first semester together, and for all the great memories we made together. Special thanks to Akib Zaman, Michael Sun, Julia Balla, Rem Yang, Shiva Sreeram, Manya Bansal, Aylin Baca, Rachel Tan, and Julie Zhu! I am also very grateful to senior PhD students and postdocs who gave me invaluable advice about deciding research topic and PhD life in general.

Miscellaneous: One of my goals in the new year is to try extreme sports, perhaps bungee jumping or skydiving. We all have innate fear about something scary, uncertain, or we haven’t experienced before. Only when you face this fear, would you be able to bring your life to the new phase. I believe extreme sports would be a good way to build up this “grit,” which is also essential for completing PhD. Another goal of mine for the new year is to make gym sessions and reading books as a part of my daily routine, to keep myself physically and mentally fresh. I would also like to become better in playing badminton, and play piano regularly!

Happy spring semester, and see you in the next post!