About
July 30th, 2006 by Lawrence David
Due to having fallen on my head repeatedly during childhood, and a parade of profoundly bad haircuts throughout middle school, I’ve either forgotten or repressed most of my memories former prior to the age of 13. So let’s start there.
I attended an all-boys Jesuit high school in Manhattan named Regis, an experience that couldn’t have been more incongruous with what Saved by the Bell promised me for years. Still, going to high school in New York City was memorable; taking Driver’s Ed in Chinatown during rush hour is downright terrifying and smells delicious.
I loved being in Manhattan so much that I did my undergrad at Columbia. There, I earned a degree in biomedical engineering, a major I recommend highly. It’s fascinating to see how many organ systems and tissues you can mathematically describe using simple DC circuit diagrams. And as a bonus, I found that my department was a national powerhouse in the assignment of macabre student projects; I once got to spend 3 continuous weeks modeling how many synthetic erythrocytes a hemorrhaging soldier would need for transfusion before he or she bled to death. Down on the Morningside range, I was also fortunate enough to get mentored by Chris Wiggins and Barclay Morrison III, who both taught me a lot about science gets done.
I now fritter away my days thinking about how to leverage computational tools like hidden Markov models, and binary tree reconciliation algorithms against problems in evolutionary microbiology. In particular, I’m interested in how to extract biological and ecological insights from the comparison of microbial DNA sequence data. With the help of my advisor Eric Alm, I hope to graduate with a doctorate in Computational & Systems Biology from MIT by around 2010.
Now, those paragraphs were all very academics-centric (I cribbed them from an application I submitted some months ago). Here are some other things I enjoy and don’t take place at school: tennis, squash, photography, backpacking, and travel. I also hang out a lot with my wife, Christina, and wish I could hang out much more with my little sister in Philadelphia, Stephanie.
In conclusion, if you’ve read this far, say hi in comments below or shoot me an e-mail on over to Ldavid AT mit DOT edu. It makes my day to get letters from strangers on the internet.
Hi Lawrence,
Please take good care of my daughter, Sonia, and make her wear a helmet when she rides her new bike or when she’s rock climbing.
Thanks!
–her Dad
Dude,
California rules
… and rumor has it EVERYONE thinks your “special” (hahah)!
See you in Feb,
-SA
Hey Lawrence,
What’s up? Biomed engineer, eh? I ended up going Pre-Med at Penn State. Now I run a small motion-picture production company in Philadelphia Go Figure. One of us will need to find the cure for mankind–I’m glad you stuck with it!
Hello Just read your blog and it is fantastic, hope all goes well and you work out what you want to do!!! Thanks for all the useful info as well
Cheers
Nicholas
UK
I love your navigation menu at the top. What a great idea, I wish I was so clever.
Hey Lawrence,
Cool site. I really like the navigation header. Thanks for all your great tricks. As a quantitative geneticist, I can really relate to your efforts in computational and systems biology. Take care good luck.
lowell
Hey Dude, came across ur website while I was browsing the net. The navigation menu is awesome, gr8 idea. Keep up the good work.
Cheers,
Kailash
Hi Lawrence!,
i am a phd student in boston and after searching a ton of resumes, i found only yours useful! thanks a ton, i am going to use it.
-best,
harish.
Lawrence, I was captivated by your website and blog, especially about the symbiosis that forms bioluminescence in that adorable sea creature. I hope you don’t eat any of them, please. They are just too precious. The basis for all this stuff, of course, is quantum. How the whole is made of wholes. It is the nature of all things. Nature is self-referential and fractal. Everything emerges from nothing. The whole is made of entangled correlates, opposites in this case. Please keep searching for your bliss and try not to worry about tax brackets. Peace. - Richard (Lawrence is my middle name, the second of three first names)
website hacks man. how did you customize your iweb so much for your groups site. I’m going to do it for my astrophysics group but am kinda new to web development in general. I have iweb but yours looks way better than anything like the templates.
Lawrence,
I found your blog searching for wordpress tips. Your top nav is just beautiful. Have you written anything about how to do it? I’m also aspiring to integrate my gallery2 into my site as nicely as you have.
I looked thru your tricks and didn’t find anything about how you accomplished these nice programming steps - did I miss something? If not, please share!
Hey Lawrence,
I was checking out Eric Alm’s website and stumbled upon your site - I met you as a prospective student visiting MIT back in April. I’m happy to say that MIT won me over completely - I’ll be heading there this fall for the geobiology program through EAPS! I am ridiculously pumped. Any words of wisdom to offer an incoming student??
Hope you’re well, Lawrence, and hope to run into you on campus sometime!
cheers,
Kate
Hey man, I stumbled across this site looking for matlab stuff. Props for the site man. Very cool. You cannot get more pro than music in the shower dictated by some random account holder over the net. Very impressed.
found your site googling for perl tips. the top menu is genius. love the music feed to your apartment. best personal site I’ve seen yet.
best of luck with school
hi!
i ended up here looking for latex tips for my thesis… and i spent more time reading your blog than trying the tips…
thanks for the tips, and for the reading
take care,
cristina.
Got some cool latex tips from your website, especially on how to singlespace itemized lists. Thanks.
Lots of useful other tips here too…guys like you who share their information freely are the backbone of open source…thanks
it would be better with other languages support, but thanks..
I m here by searching some thing for perl …..I m linking u to my blog !!!
Great work
Keep it up dude
Thanks
Lucky
great site!
keep on!!
Love the style of the links up top. I’m a currently very bored grad student from South Africa popping in to say hi. So… hi! Found your blog when I was searching for some python info. Thanks!
Great web page! Both the design and the context are fascinating.
Hi Lawrence,
Found your website because I googled how to reverse python list. Then found myself reading your about me section.
Good luck on your PHD. Sounds like a very interesting field! I work at Bioware Corp making videogames. Usually use C++ but needed Python to patch some things up.
Best of luck!
Hi Lawrence,
I’m doing a phd in biophotonics. A similar experience to the posts above, I found your website while looking help in Matlab. I also really like your link icons. is it difficult to do? I’m trying to create a website which has a minimal animations for a clean for-the-eye sake. However I’m really drawn to your idea. Help or suggestion would be highly appreciated.
Regards,
Pop
Lawrence-
Stumbled upon your site while looking for info about upgrading my mac’s OS.
What a great site! I’m bookmarking it and plan to check it out later when I have time.
Take care!
-steve
Hi Lawrence,
My name is Carlo and I’m an undergrad at Wesleyan University, in Middletown, CT. I’m just posting to let you know that I’m working with your AdaptML program for bioinformatics research I’m doing over here. As a computer scientist with some interest in graduate school in the future, I also find your website very inspiring! Keep up the great work!
Hi Lawrence!
Great site!
I am just wondering if somehow you have Filipino blood or something.
Keep those neurons working!
best,
wilmarc
I just cribbed how to assign a variable from a command output in bash, thanks!
Nice site, good luck with the PhD.
great site Lawrence! I had a great time speaking with you at the BE retreat. Looking forward to future conversations =).
Lawrence! It was great riding back from the BE retreat with you and Robbie. The conversation was truly insightful. Good luck finishing your thesis work and with your Society position at Harvard!
First not boring page which helped to solve my LaTeX problem. On the other hand, I’ve spent here more time than I intended.:)
This is one “Hi!” from Czech girl recently in Denmark.
Hey Lawrence,
great page! Thanks a lot for your tutorial on MySQL/Matlab, it really made my day
(And saved me about 10 hours of work, I guess…)
Have a nice day,
Martin
Nice man! Thanks for the matlab tutorials! I love to know little tricks. I visited MIT recently with my gf, I love Boston. You are one creative dude! I did the whole engineering route at PSU, also, finished with a Masters in EE. I recommend engineering to everyone. Now, after 6 years working, thinking to head to law school. Keep up the tutorials!
Your cyberspace fan
Jase