About me

Hi, I’m Lia, a mathematician converting to software engineering. I graduated with a Bachelor’s in Mathematics from the University of Chicago in 2020. I’m currently living the Start-Up Nation dream in Israel, working at NextSilicon on embedded algorithms for compilers.

I moved to Jerusalem from Montreal, Canada at the age of 12. Even though I was able to pick up conversational Hebrew, classes were a struggle. Math and science became my natural comfort zone. Most of the technical terms are variations on the Latin in all languages anyway, and there are tons of online resources in English.

When studying for my degree in math at UChicago, I discovered that higher level math is usually explained in extremely archaic English. Moreover, it is rarely connected to tangible examples. Having spent years in Hebrew-speaking schools, incomprehensible classes were familiar. For me, frantically writing everything on the board and needing to reread slowly after class was … well … normal. Just like learning Hebrew, over time, math became easier to follow in real-time.

Looking back, that initial period of feeling completely lost in class was the biggest obstacle. Yes, the material is complex, and it is difficult to think in new terms. However, a lot of the difficulty was the way math was taught, using antiquated language and without many practical examples.

I named my blog Applied in Theory because I hope to expose the math thoery behind engineering in an accessible way. A lot of the material is legitimately really cool, it’s just impossible to understand in the format of a math textbook. The best part is that thanks to the brilliant engineers I work with, I naturally have access to examples that show why the math matters and how it is used.