I am a PhD student in the EECS department at UC Berkeley studying Computer Science and Economics advised by Avi Feller and Emi Nakamura. I am primarily interested in the dynamics of wealth, income, and debt and their implications for public policy. On the technical side, I draw methodology from optimization, dynamical systems, causal inference, and high-dimensional statistics.

Previously, I was a researcher in the ADEPT lab where I studied how to make gene sequencing and Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms faster. Prior to graduate school, I was a research engineer at Reservoir Labs where I developed tensor decomposition algorithms and applied them to gene expression and computer networks. I received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Yale University.

Contact: bruns-smith(at)berkeley(dot)edu