Alex Levin

graduate student in applied mathematics

About me

I am a fifth-year student in the department of mathematics at MIT. Before graduate school, I studied math at Harvard and then spent a year working in finance.

My current interests include algorithms and computational biology. In algorithms, I have worked on the problem of spectral sparsification -- approximating dense graphs by much sparser subgraphs. In computational biology, I have worked on RNA secondary structure and population genetics. Feel free to take a look at my LinkedIn profile.

Outside of classes and research, I like to travel, play sports, and study languages. I picked up Spanish while in graduate school.

Selected Papers

  1. Jonathan A. Kelner and Alex Levin. "Spectral sparsification in the semi-streaming setting." In Proceedings of the 28th International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS), pp. 440-451, 2011. (Proceedings version)
  2. Alex Levin, Mieszko Lis, Yann Ponty, Charles W. O'Donnell, Srinivas Devadas, Bonnie Berger, and Jerome Waldispuhl. "A global sampling approach to designing and reengineering RNA secondary structures." Nucleic Acids Research, 2012.
  3. Ioannis Koutis, Alex Levin, and Richard Peng. "Improved spectral sparsification and numerical algorithms for SDD matrices." Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS) 2012. (arXiv)
  4. Mark Lipson, Po-Ru Loh, Alex Levin, David Reich, Nick Patterson, and Bonnie Berger. "Efficient moment-based inference of admixture parameters and sources of gene flow." Submitted.

Funding

My work has been generously funded by the Liberty Mutual Insurance Company/Boston Foundation and the MIT Applied Mathematics Fellowship. Currently, I am supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship. All views expressed on this website are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the organizations listed above.

Contact

Email: (my last name) AT-SIGN mit DOT edu

Postal:
Department of Mathematics, 2-342
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139