Splash Biography

We've got it all- lasers, plasma, ML, oh my! In this course, we'll be going over the results from Kuramitsu et. al. 2024 ("optimization of laser-driven quantum beam generation and the applications with artificial intelligence"), and more broadly looking at the field of laser plasma accelerators (including the BELLA Center at LBNL). We'll also discuss the rise of primitive machine learning techniques in distant fields, and what makes a good paper topic.

Oh my god particle- the Higgs boson is the most important recent discovery in particle physics, hailed as the culmination of how we understand all normal matter. But beyond the hype, what is it mathematically, and how did we find it? This course aims to take you from the most basic classical physics- i. e. the energy of a roller coaster- to understanding what vacuum expectation values, gauge groups, and off shell Z decay are- and how all of that relates to your ability to not spontaneously combust into subatomic particles.

Whenever people are frustrated about social welfare, government inaction, and American society and culture, they tend to point to Scandinavia. Often ranked the best in the world in health, happiness, democracy, wealth, and all the other good stuff, it's easy to see why people idealize these countries. So, after a semester living in Sweden and formally studying Scandinavian society, I wanted to share how I think the myth compares to reality- the good, bad, and ugly of life there, and what we can learn about ourselves and our values from that.

It was done with the grandest and most terrible ideologies, with gentle pushes and violent reprisals, and its legacy is one of mixed emotions and uncertainty. This course offers a broad tour of US imperialism, from Manifest destiny to the colonization of Hawaii and the Philippines to interventions in Latin America and beyond.