About me

I’m a third year Computer Science Ph.D. student at MIT, advised by Martin Rinard.

Before coming here, I completed my M.S. in Computer Science at NYU, where I worked with Dennis Shasha on implementing AQuery, an optimizing compiler for order-related database queries. Before that, I worked for Morgan Stanley as part of the housing and mortgage research group. I graduated with a B.A. in Economics from University of Pennsylvania in 2011. I’m originally from San José, Costa Rica.

My main research interests center around programming languages, databases, and data science. I’m particularly interested in applying programming language techniques to improve the way we do work in the latter two areas.

These interests include directions such as:

• optimization: how can we optimize data analysis-related programming tasks and systems? I particularly like the idea of optimizations that stem from a key insight in the way we use and think about data, rather than necessarily focusing on optimization from a systems-perspective. Our recent work on working with missing data is one such example.
• user experience/accesibility: how can we make programming for data analysis easier and accessible to non-experts? An increasingly large portion of the data-science community have domain expertise in areas outside of computer science and programming. I believe we are responsible for producing and improving tools that allow them to be productive without getting mired in details they may not be interested in.
• automation: how can we learn useful patterns in programming for data analysis and automate them to produce more robust programs/applications? Many tasks related to data analysis are tedious, repetitive, and error-prone. We should look for opportunities to remove human interaction from these and allow experts to focus on the core of their problems.

I’ve also worked on an assortment of other projects, such as using iOS data to customize image compression for users with color vision deficiencies, and performing large-scale color vision analysis across different countries.

• I spent the summer working on machine learning and software engineering as an intern at Facebook’s Boston office. I will be back at MIT for the fall semester.

• Query Optimization for Dynamic Imputation

  Details PDF

• VLDB: Query Optimization for Dynamic Imputation

  2017-08-30, VLDB 2017

• Kdb+ User Meetup September 2016

  2016-09-20, Kx Systems Meetup

I’ve had experience as a teaching assistant for programming languages and grader for compiler construction.

• Teaching Assistant: Graduate Course in Programming Languages. Fall 2014, NYU
• Grader: Graduate Course in Compiler Construction. Spring 2015, NYU
• Grader: Graduate Course in Compiler Construction. Fall 2015, NYU
• Grader: Graduate Course in Compiler Construction. Spring 2016, NYU

I also like to be involved in activities around the student community at MIT. Some examples of this are

• I co-organized, with Ivan Kuraj, the MIT Programming Languages Offsite 2017. The event is meant to foster dialogue and ideas amongst members of the MIT PL community and neighboring institutions.
• I co-organized in 2017, with Candace Ross, the first diversity panel during admitted students’ visit weekend at MIT. The panel was meant to provide a location for prospective students to ask any questions they might have about diversity at MIT and how we are working towards improving our community.
• I am on the CSAIL Student Committee and serve as Treasurer (Fall 2017 - Current).

can be found here