About Us

Berkeley is one of the cradles of modern theoretical computer science. Over the last thirty years, our students and professors have contributed to fundamental progress in complexity theory, optimization, algorithmic game theory, cryptography, quantum computing and more. Within these areas, we see a thriving interest among undergraduates that is stronger than it has been before, but at the same time, many of our classmates also find these areas largely unapproachable.

From students who are still taking CS70 to those who have already finished graduate seminar courses in theory, our goal is to create a broader community for students of all interests and backgrounds to learn and get involved in theoretical computer science. Through social events, study groups, talks, seminars, and annual decals, we hope to explore the mathematical foundations of CS as well as its intrinsic connections other studies: economics through computational game theory and mechanism design, physics through random structures and quantum computing, biology, and mathematics.

We try to make our events not only educative and enlightening, but also approachable and fun. If you're interested, here are some ways you can get involved!

Meet our Members

Jonathan Liu President liujon23 (at) berkeley.edu Fourth-year Math/CS student. Holds as the core tenet of modern civilization that all foods can be classified as soup, salad, and/or sandwich.

Jeff Xu Vice President jeffxusichao (at) berkeley.edu Third year CS and Math major and believer in the "so and so" optimality .

Antares Chen Member in Spirit antaresc (at) berkeley.edu Do you ever stare at your toaster and wonder, "why ducks?"

Kobe(Yimeng) Wang Random Member Generator wangyimeng98 (at) berkeley.edu With high probability I am random.

Aditya Reading Group Director amangalampalli [at] berkeley.edu Fear is a tool. They think I'm hiding in the shadows. But I AM the shadows.

Aditya Subramanian Lazy Propagator subru (at) berkeley.edu Non-resident member of the club, who resides on flat Earth. Proof? The Earth is four-colorable, hence the Earth is planar.

Alex Yu Random Canadian Traveler sxyu (at) berkeley.edu I'm a second-year CS and Math major from Canada, aka. doriath.

Antares Chen Member in Spirit antaresc (at) berkeley.edu Do you ever stare at your toaster and wonder, "why ducks?"

Catherine Huang (she/her) Vice President thecatherinehuang (at) berkeley.edu Lover of sustenance and theory.

David Zhang (he/him) Two-Armed Bandit dzh (at) berkeley.edu Empirically shown to exhibit unbounded regret.

Debayan Band The Naïve Solution debayanband (at) berkeley.edu To be sure, I spend most of my time scrapping together physics psets with help from my peers—multiplicative weights, anyone?—and bashing my head against NullPointers. While many people make complex jokes that draw many novel connections between different topics, my humor is a lot planar.

Eric Lu Reading Group Deputy erilu762 [at] berkeley.edu Urna nunc id cursus metus aliquam eleifend mi in. Faucibus interdum posuere lorem ipsum. Quis commodo odio aenean sed adipiscing diam. Amet purus gravida quis blandit.

Gabriel Chen Turing Machine Tape Feeder gabrielchen (at) berkeley.edu A human being who believes the first part of Gödel's disjunction. A wonderer of life who carries her laptop for LaTeX.

James Hulett Chief "Why Is This Guy Still Here?" Officer jhulett (at) berkeley.edu I actually graduated last year so to be sure I *also* don't know why I'm still here. Though I am quite curious if you can include emoji in this description. 🤔💻👨 I guess I'll know if that worked once this goes on the website.

Jeff Xu Vice President jeffxusichao@ Third year CS and Math major and believer in the "so and so" optimality .

Jiazheng Zhao Resident Clique Planter This margin is too narrow to contain the description of myself. (bad joke haha)

Joe Wang Reading Group Director zezhou_wang [at] berkeley.edu And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by the ones who could not hear the music.

John Chang Reading Group Deputy jchang04 [at] berkeley.edu hey guys

Jonathan Liu President liujon23 (at) berkeley.edu Fourth-year Math/CS student. Holds as the core tenet of modern civilization that all foods can be classified as soup, salad, and/or sandwich.

Kevin An undirected graph director kevinan (at) berkeley.edu I can prove anything! Proof: I sometimes make mistakes. Apply ex falso sequitur quodlibet.

Korinna Frangias (she/her) President kfrangias (at) berkeley.edu Hi! I am a fourth year EECS major, I spend more time with Bob and Alice than with my friends, and it's been suggested that Sipser stole his "Theory of Computation" from my fourth grade paper.

Max Ovsiankin Who Knows maxov@ I do things, sometimes. I wish this were true more often.

Michael Lisano Low-Rank State Machine mtl (at) berkeley.edu hi

Natalie Parham Evesdropper natalieparham (at) berkeley.edu Fourth year EECS student. wooohooo theory.

Rahul Tewari Information Theoretically a Group Member rahul.tewari (at) berkeley.edu I have been hiding the polynomial time solution to three-SAT under my matress and no-one has noticed.

Reina Wang (she/her) Marketing Co-chair reinaw1012 (at) berkeley.edu Third year EECS major. Would rather write proofs than a creative bio.

Ronit Nath (he/him) President ronitnath (at) berkeley.edu We hope for theory to inform practice. In practice, we hope for more theory.

Sylvia Jin (she/her) TeX Support swjin (at) berkeley.edu frontend web develooper busy force-pushing to master. math major who has infiltrated this club

Tianchen Liu (he/him) Interactive Prover tianchenliu (at) berkeley.edu The Jianbings in Berkeley cost $14 and I really wish they were cheaper, but the $5 BAMPFA movies kinda make up for it.

Tynan Sigg (he/him) Zero-Knowledge Person tsigg (at) berkeley.edu I was once the world’s youngest person, have more arms than average, and can guess the solutions to NP-complete problems with 50% probability. In my free time I can be found mountain biking, untangling qubits, playing cello, and replacing the tape in my Turing machine.

Victor Yau (he/him) Treasurer victoryau (at) berkeley.edu Looking for funding. With money, I'd start an NFT collection and buy game cosmetics. Outside of work, I like reading fantasy, playing poker, and attempting badminton.

Vishnu Iyer Traveling Salesman vishnu.iyer (at) berkeley.edu Third year EECS undergraduate. The remainder of this description is left as an exercise to the reader.

William Yang Naive Tree Hugger william_yang (at) berkeley.edu Not the fastest algorithm in the books but will work hard to eventually solve your problems.