Ethan Fast

Self

I'm a rising senior at the University of Virginia, majoring in Computer Science (and perhaps Cognitive Science as well).

I'm from from the great suburbia of Northern Virginia, a place that I don't find terribly interesting.

I write frequently -- in short fiction and, more technically, on my blog [1].

I find that random wanderings often crystalize thought, so I'm rarely working in one place for too long.

Along those lines, I'm also a fan of minimalist/barefoot running. For instance: [2]

Research

Broadly, I'm interested in artificial intelligence and machine learning, as biased by a fascination with the evolutionary paradigm.

While at U.Va, I was fortunate enough to become involved in a group working on automatic program repair with genetic algorithms. This is exactly as it sounds: given broken C source code, an indicative bug, and a regression test suite, we generate a new "fixed" program. See this paper for an overview. [3] More specifically, I was part of a research effort to increase the efficiency and precision of our fitness function by applying test case sampling techniques and using dynamic predicates. [4].

Complex Systems research is a natural fit for my interests, which don't neatly fit into any one area or discipline. SFI seemed an excellent place to come and try out this kind of interdisciplinary work.