People

In life, people come and people go. As I learned in my category theory courses, you can learn a lot about my own personal story by learning about the people I interact with. For just a brief moment, let us let the sentiments (and cringe) take over.

It would not be feasible to have a comprehensive list of everyone who has significantly impacted my life, nor would it be appropriate to list my many close friends and family members. I will restrict this list to only people who have affected me on a professional level. This is not a journal. This list merely highlights several people who, if you have met them (and me), I imagine you'll clearly see the lasting impact they have left on me. This list is presented in reverse chronological order of when I first met them, and is most definitely incomplete.

(From left to right) Me, Dmitrii Petrukhin, and Anand Rao Tadipatri
(July 2025)

Me with George Coote
(July 2025)

Me with Jacob Loader
(July 2025)

I was a member of Wolfson College during my time at the University of Cambridge. Regular use of the college's dining hall soon resulted in several faces becoming familiar; dinner mates turned into friends. These four were the most common faces I saw and spoke to. Dmitrii Petrukhin was doing his PhD in economics, while Anand Rao Tadipatri, George Coote, and Jacob Loader were all doing their PhD in mathematics. It was not uncommon for our dinner chatters to be mathematically involved, to the dismay of a few people who chose to sit with us. These included talking about contents in seminars, lectures, random puzzles, or the things we were working on, and I learned a lot from my exchanges with them. I promise, we did also have normal conversations. These four people, among several others, really gave me a sense of belonging to the college. I always went out of my way to appear in the dining halls just so I could see them, even if I had already eaten. Lots of my free time was spent with them and I just liked hanging out with them, often in the college Club Room. If it weren't for them, I might have gone many days without seeing another face during the term breaks. Who knows if I could have maintained my sanity if that was the case?

Me with Adam Epstein
(August 2024)

Adam Epstein was the first person to really expose me to the world of logic. Chiefly, he was the main supervisor for me in my MA395 Essay module as well as the lecturer for the MA3L1 Topics in Set Theory module at the University of Warwick. His willingness to talk (in person, over email, and on Microsoft Teams) about not only logic and set theory but also about a wide range of topics really shaped me mathematically.

Me with Oscar Duran
(October 2022)

Me with Oscar Duran
(November 2022)

He is easily my closest friend from my undergraduate years and one of the nicest people I have ever met. Short of my banking information, Oscar Duran knows everything there is to know about me. Our many at-home movie nights together made living in Leamington Spa really enjoyable despite the bus situation to and from campus at peak hours. He was a BSc Mathematics and Physics student, so we initially bonded over several shared modules in our first and second year, though we also very regularly met in many social gatherings. By our third year, both of us became very interested in logic. Many of our conversations revolved around logic, much to the dismay of the rest of our friend group. A fairly insignificant fact but still a cute memory for me: the first time I attended an academic conference was with him in our third undergraduate year.

Me with Matthew Helm
(May 2022)

(From left to right) Matthew Helm, Oscar Duran, and me
(May 2022)

Matthew Helm was my closest mathematical ally during my undergraduate years, with whom I shared the most number of undergraduate modules compared to any of my friends. Both of us were brought up as analysts and worked together a lot over our 3 years at the University of Warwick. Matt would go on to pursue the field of analysis while I slowly pivoted to logic in my final undergraduate year. I actually first met Matt online, over weekly Zoom calls with people who held an offer for undergraduate study at the University of Warwick (the COVID-19 pandemic was, indeed, a strange time). He is one of the most ambitious (in a good way!) people I know; Matt would do shoot for something big (e.g. attending integration bees, giving student seminar talks, applying for a summer research project, applying to a master's degree, applying to a PhD degree, etc.) and the running joke was that I would follow suit.

(From left to right) Me, Joshua Thor, Clarynnsia Lai, Eunice Tan, and Nadine Loh
(September 2023)

I attended Methodist College Kuala Lumpur from July 2019 to December 2020. I met and was friends with Joshua Thor from the first day till our very last; we studied the same set of A-Level subjects and were constant companians in all our classes. Clarynnsia Lai and Eunice Tan first bonded with me over music. Being amazing musicians themselves, they inspired me to take music playing a lot more seriously. Clarynnsia was also my go-to person to seek help with physics and mechanics. Nadine Loh was already a good friend of the latter two when I first met her, and I am yet to find someone with so many intriguing lunchtime-stories. Academically, all four of us had the Mathematics and Further Mathematics A-Level subjects in common. Our many study groups and hangouts, even online during the COVID-19 pandemic, turned my experience of being at Methodist College Kuala Lumpur from at first a not-so-enjoyable one to one I will always think fondly of.

Me with Hina Khan
(July 2020)

Hina Khan was my biology teacher in secondary school. She is perhaps my favourite teacher from my schooling years; her passion for teaching and helping immature children, as I once was, was clear every single schooling day. Biology was one of several subjects I struggled with in my schooling years. It was to her that I made my first confession in my educational life of not being able to keep up, after I received a substandard grade for a mock test. Pretty soon after that, she set up an after-school biology club, which entailed her going through the contents of IGCSE Biology with me (and a couple other schoolmates) again at a slower pace. All of these sessions involved an active participation from my (and my peers') part(s). The discussions kept the sessions engaging and entertaining for young me, and helped me learn the material quicker. Perhaps the most important takeaway for me from all these sessions was that people are (almost) always more than willing to help you if you just ask. Cliché as it may sound, she was that one teacher who shaped me to be who I am today.