Shayan.
Studying CS and Pure Math at UWaterloo. I’ve built tools for testing voice agents at Hamming and solved my first open problem. Always curious about {?}. If you’re up for an unexpected conversation, consider saying hi.
Recent
AI and Education
I recently came across this report from MIT’s ad hoc committee on AI use. AI feels like the elephant in every room now, and the report considers what it means for teaching, learning, and research. What caught my attention was the emphasis on people, community, and the residential experience. It made me think about how much an in-person event in residence can matter: a reason to leave your room, me...
My first open problem
In the winter of 2026, I started an undergraduate research assistantship (URA) with Prof. Elena Grigorescu. I began thinking about Hierholzer’s algorithm, a classical algorithm for finding Euler tours that I remembered from my Olympiad days. The question was how to keep its linear running time while using much less memory. A solution existed for directed graphs, but the undirected case was still o...
A grandmaster I’ll never be
I started playing chess when I was six. I took private lessons and competed at the national level, only to grow up and realize that this wasn’t what I wanted to do with my life. So I quit competing, stuck to online bullet, and stayed away from tournaments. Then, in the summer of 2024, I heard about a competition at Hart House at the University of Toronto and signed up. You know, sometimes it feels...
“The most beautiful city in the world is the one where you are happy.”Erich Maria Remarque · The Night in Lisbon