Sarah's Blog

About me

Thanks for visiting my blog! I am in my third year at Columbia University, studying CS and math. I’m involved in a lot of seemingly unrelated research, tied together by a faint interest in math and a passion for creating. Outside of research, I play violin and help lead the Columbia Robotics Club.

My blogs are similarly sporadic in frequency and topic, but I write mainly on cool algorithms, math, and personal epiphanies.

My research

I’m currently involved in three research projects.

1. MOSES (Columbia Gang Lab) - A foundational algorithm applying the group theoretic concept of ‘symmetry’ to chemical engineering. An information-minimizing method for to designing self-assembling DNA origami nanoparticle lattices. Our paper was accepted to ACS Nano! This blog post also talks about it more in depth.

2. Synchrony (NYU Dennis Shasha Group) - An opinionated practice tool for musicians, which compares a user’s recording to a MIDI score and computes the user’s mistakes in real-time. Uses a probabilistic pitch detection method that utilizes the MIDI to detect note events. Under supervision of the kind NYU professor Dennis Shasha.

3. RichCluster (UND Hur Lab) - An Rcpp library for performing hierarchical clustering on multiple enriched genomics datasets. Clusters different biological ‘terms’ based on overlapping gene content. Coded in C++ for fast clustering, with customizable linkage / distance metrics and supporting visualizations. (Paper-in-progress)

For fun, I also play violin in the Barrio Tango Orchestra with some really amazing people. My friend and I have both started learning tango as well. 👯‍♀️

Recent posts