Go, wond'rous creature, mount where Science guides,
Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides;
Instruct the planets in what orbs to run,
Correct old time, and regulate the sun.

ALEXANDER POPE (1733)

Hi! ☺️ Nice to meet you! My name's Brendan, I'm an applied mathematician living in Brooklyn, NY. I was born in Korea and grew up in the suburbs of Massachusetts. (I also lived on Cape Cod for while very close to the beach!)

I absolutely love meeting new people and going off on impromptu adventures! The most wonderful times in my life have been when I was immersed in a big group in a strange new place, exploring and figuring out how to survive, working on projects. (e.g. study abroad in Chengdu, research program at UChicago, solo traveling in Northern Italy) I'm a pretty bubbly person and I try really hard to be uplifting and excited about all the cool stuff in the world! I'm also pretty focused on my work and I like healthy routines, like running each day in the evening.

I love peaceful study sessions in bookstores and hiking trips in the mountains, cooking ambitious meals with friends and wintery ❄️ ski trips, though I haven't been on one of the latter for a while 🥲.

Here's some basic info about me:

📚 Book lover! Current recs are "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell" and "Perestroika in Paris".
🧮 For work I do interactive theorem proving and functional programming for program verification. It's actually very fun!
🌇 I live in a 1 bedroom apartment in downtown Brooklyn where I'm trying my hand at becoming an amateur home decorator lol
🌱 Definitely not a botanist but plants make me happy so I'm always getting new ones
🔭 For me, living life, doing research, and advancing the state of technology are hopelessly interwined. I can't imagine wanting to do anything but make discoveries about the deepest nature of things!
🏃‍♂️ I love running, am rubbish at it, but do manage to run every day. If anyone who visits wants to come running I'd be delighted! I was also an NCAA athlete in a rather unusual sport, and I'm a middling climber.
🥘 Aspiring Indian home chef! I absolutely love simple comfort dishes like Pav Bhaji.
🎼 I took voice lessons for a bit and I love singing/karaoke! I also twiddle on the guitar a bit when bored
✈️ Explored moors and grassy cliffs in Ireland, temples and 7/11s in Kyoto, Japan, the breathtaking alps in Interlaken, Switzerland, and the rice paddies and bustling cities of Sichuan, China.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

CS filters for high-openness people, I want to meet more folks who are daring and courageous, so maybe they'll rub off on me haha!

Interests

• writing
• books
• baking
• running
• skiing
• swimming
• engineering
• mathematics
• physics
• longboarding
• tree climbing
• functional programming

Music, Movies, and Books

Hozier, Would That I 🌳🔥
Nose on the Grindstone, Tyler Childers
the 1, Taylor Swift

Weathering With You ☔️
Imitation Game
Luca

Vaclav Smil, Growth
Disturbing the Universe, Freeman Dyson
Katherine Arden, The Bear and the Nightingale
Philip Pullman, The Book of Dust
Kenneth Oppel, Airborn

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I was once ranked #1 in the country in the category "Herbs and Spices" on a trivia app called QuizUp.

Teach, Learn, Share

I have no idea what's supposed to go in this section but I'm happy to learn anything you can teach me!

I can talk your ear off about how a Galilean revolution for computing is nigh with the advent of dependently-typed programming languages that allow us to do computations in a compositionally correct way (and prove that they are so).

Or about self-replicating hardware, or gravitation and geometrodynamics!

There's so much cool stuff being done in math and science right now!

"History's not over, you know. It's happening all around us."

The Secret Commonwealth
Philip Pullman

What I Can Share with Hosts

BOOKS

My enthusiasm for C*-algebras! (jk)

I always have a stocked fridge, I can give recommendations for cool places to study and hang out in the city, like coffee shops and cafes. I can bring you climbing in Brooklyn and explore the city with you!