Areas of Interest

Metaphysics, Philosophy of Language, Logic, Philosophy of Mathematics, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Religion

Education

• 2007–Present New York University, PhD candidate in Philosophy
• 2006–2007 Rutgers University, PhD candidate in Philosophy
• 2001–2005 Stanford University
  Bachelor of Arts with distinction in Philosophy
  Bachelor of Science with distinction in Mathematics
  Minor in Symbolic Systems
• Fall 2004 Stanford-in-Oxford Programme
  Affiliated with Corpus Christi College, Oxford

Honors and Awards

• 2008 Oxford Studies in Metaphysics Younger Scholars Prize
• 2007 MacCracken Fellow, New York University
• 2005 Rhodes finalist
• 2004 Barry M. Goldwater Scholar
• Phi Beta Kappa, early induction
• 2002 President’s Award for Excellence in the Freshman Year, Stanford University
• 2001 President’s Scholar, Stanford University

Undergraduate Scholarships

National Merit Scholar, Robert C. Byrd Foundation, National Elks Foundation, Washington State Elks Association Most Valuable Student, Kiwanis Club of Bellingham, Bellingham Rotary Club

Publications

• “The Structure of Gunk: Adventures in the Ontology of Space,” in Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, ed. Dean Zimmerman, vol. 4. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 248–274.

Presentations

• “Indefinite Divisibility.” Arché/CSMN Graduate Conference, St. Andrews. November 8, 2009.
• “Actuality for Counterpart Theorists.” Phloxshop II: Modality, Humboldt University, Berlin. September 11, 2009.
• Comments on Sean Aas’s “Modality: Norms and Naturalism.” NYU/Columbia Graduate Philosophy Conference. March 7, 2009.
• “Indefinite Divisibility.” Washington Square Circle, NYU. January 27, 2009.
• Comments on Katrina Przyjemski’s “A Monstrous Semantics for Anaphoric Pronouns.” NYU/Columbia Graduate Philosophy Conference. March 1, 2008.
• “‘Probably If’ and Conditional Probability.” Yale/UConn Graduate Philosophy Conference. Storrs, Connecticut. November 10, 2007.
• “The Structure of Gunk.” Society for Exact Philosophy. Vancouver, British Columbia. May 18, 2007.
• Comments on Josh Rasmussen’s “A Scotistic Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God.” Religion at Rutgers. January 13, 2007.
• “A Domain-Specific Statistical Surface Realizer.” Proceedings of the Student Research Workshop at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics. Ann Arbor, Michican. June 27, 2005.
• “Statistical Natural Language Generation for Navigation Instructions.” CSLI Talk, August 27, 2004.

Teaching

• Teaching assistant, Philosophy of Biology. Spring 2009. Laura Franklin-Hall
• Teaching assistant, Ancient Philosophy. Fall 2008. Matt Evans

Professional Service

• NYU philosophy department computer & website maintenance. 2008–present.
• Reviewer, NYU/Columbia Graduate Conference 2009.
• Co-organizer, NYU/Columbia Graduate Conference 2008.
• Reviewer, Rutgers/Princeton Graduate Conference 2007.
• Reviewer, Religion at Rutgers. 2007.

Graduate Coursework

NYU

• Proseminar Kit Fine & Jim Pryor Three is a crowd
• Vagueness and Indeterminacy Stephen Schiffer & Crispin Wright Disagreeing with the omniscient (about the vague)
• Philosophy of Physics: Quantum Mechanics Tim Maudlin, Rutgers
• Epistemology* Jim Pryor
• Proseminar Don Garrett & John Richardson
• Metaphysics John Hawthorne, Rutgers The future in context
• Associated Writing: Modality Ted Sider Actuality for counterpart theorists
• Dynamic Meaning* Chris Barker, linguistics
• Vagueness* Kit Fine
• Associated Writing: Generality Kit Fine Indefinite divisibility
• Metaphysical Structure Ted Sider How to ground ground
• Aesthetics Alexander Nehamas, Princeton Truth and meaning in fiction
• Philosophy of Mathematics* Hartry Field
• Metaphysics* John Hawthorne, Princeton
• Philosophy of Language* Seth Yalcin
• Philosophy of the High-Level Sciences* Michael Strevens
• Metaphysics* Shamik Dasgupta

Rutgers

• Proseminar Ted Sider
• 18th Century Philosophy Martha Bolton Cudworth against voluntarism
• Medieval Philosophy* Calvin Normore, Princeton
• Semantics 2: Crosslinguistic Dynamics* Maria Bittner, linguistics
• Conditionals Jason Stanley & Barry Loewer ‘Probably if’ and conditional probability
• Philosophy of Physics: Relativity Tim Maudlin
• Philosophically Useful Logic Ted Sider
• Singular Thought* John Hawthorne

Stanford

• Semantics David Beaver How trivial are trivial determiners?
• Microeconomics
• Modern Algebra Daniel Bump
• Artificial Intelligence Daphne Kohler
• Probabilistic Methods in Artificial Intelligence Daphne Kohler
• Natural Language Processing Christopher Manning

(* Not for credit.)

Research Experience Outside of Philosophy

• 2005–2006 Robert Bosch Corp. Research and Technology Center
  Computational linguistics & artificial intelligence
  Supervisor: Fuliang Weng
• 2004–2005 Center for the Study of Language and Information, Semantics Lab
  Computational linguistics
  Supervisor: Stanley Peters
• Summer 2003 University of Washington, Research Experiences for Undergraduates
  Mathematics
  Supervisor: James Morrow
• Summer 2002 Philips/Heartstream
  Applied mathematics & engineering
  Supervisor: Stacy Gehman