Aurelian Learning
tutor
Graham Smith
Education
PhD, Computational Neuroscience, 2022
Dissertation: Modeling and Characterizing Population-Scale Neural Activity, with Applications to Epilepsy (link)
SB, Mathematics, 2015
(both at the University of Chicago)
Experience
10+ years TA'ing, mentoring, tutoring, and teaching
15+ years coding
★★★★★ on the tutoring platform Wyzant
Longer Bio
I've just finished my PhD in computational neuroscience* at UChicago, and am now tutoring full time while writing a fantasy novel. My tutoring specialties are coding, grad school application essay review (also undergrad), and technical interview prep. Within coding, my particular specialty is scientific programming, though I am proficient in a wide variety of languages and paradigms.
My teaching experience spans a dozen courses over the past 10 years, with students ranging from computationally-minded PhD students to theater majors unwillingly taking their math requirement. My programming experience spans the past 15 years, beginning in high school, continuing through most of a college CS major, going full-time during my 7-year PhD, and continuing now with personal projects. I've used a wide variety of languages to the point that I'm confident I can help you through coding in any language you may be using. The core of most programs (the algorithm) usually transcends language, and so do the critical auxiliary skills like Google-fu and debugging. Fair warning: I won't design nor debug your program for you. I'll basically be a rubber ducky that asks leading and encouraging questions. In my experience it's an effective tutoring method for everyone from complete beginners through experts.
For technical interview prep we'll work from McDowell's "Cracking the Coding Interview" to make sure you know all the strategies to nail those pesky questions asked by everyone from start-ups to quant hedge funds.
I have most recent experience in Julia, Python, & Matlab. Previously I've used Mathematica, C, Java, R, & Haskell.
Please reach out with any questions! I'm happy to tell you whether I'll be helpful on a particular project (or type of job interview). With any luck, you won't need my help for long!
*My thesis studied third order correlation of neural data, applied to detecting neonatal seizures. Also there was a chapter proving things about a very specific type of seizure.