Anish Jayant
About Me
I'm an undergraduate at USC studying math and computer science, where I am fortunate to be advised by Prof. Vatsal Sharan. In general, I'm interested in learning theory and theoretical computer science, and especially enjoy thinking about how/why brittleness arises in these areas.
Please do not hesitate to reach out if you're also interested in optimization, learning, or information theory! I'd love to learn from you and share what I have. I'm also applying for PhD programs this cycle!
Awards
- Provost Research Award, semesters: Fall 2024, Spring 2025, Summer 2025, Fall 2025
- Recognizes work on Lower Bounds for Ill-Conditioned Systems, total $6,000 so far.
- Trustee Fellowship, by USC, 2022-2026
- Full tuition scholarship (approx. $275,000).
- Viterbi Fellowship, by USC Viterbi School of Engineering, 2022-2026
- Additional research stipend, $1,500 per semester.
- WVT Rusch Honors Thesis Program, by USC Viterbi, 2023-2026
Notes and Projects
I really enjoy courses with final projects and giving talks! Here are some notes and slides:- Smoothed analysis of online learning (CS670/Algorithms course project) Showing guarantees of very simple algorithms in this setting! I gave a quick talk using these slides.
- Robust mean estimation (CS699 talk) A sketch talk on algorithmic aspects of robust mean estimation.
- Clustering from a social choice perspective (CS673/Networked Information course project). A more experimental project (with fantastic collaborators)! Also, some notes on approximation algorithms for correlation clustering.
- Limitations of transformers (PALMS Group Lunch Talk). Nice theory work showing combinatorial limitations of transformer architecture.
- Slides, write-up (CS476/Cryptography course project) about learning under cryptographic hardness.
- Private-robust mechanism design (CS699/Theory of ML course project). We gave a presentation on this cool paper using these slides.