I am a fourth-year PhD student at Georgetown University studying theoretical computer science under Sasha Golovnev.

Before I came to Georgetown, I was an undergraduate at University of Rochester where I graduated with an honors degree in mathematics and a minor in CS. You can find my CV here. Feel free to contact me at sik29 (at) georgetown (dot) edu.

Research

I'm broadly interested in theoretical computer science, particularly in applying the tools of graph theory and other areas of discrete mathematics to problems in CS. Lately I've been working on function inversion with preprocessing.

Publications:

  1. On the Power of Adaptivity for Function Inversion (ECCC)
    Karthik Gajulapalli, Alexander Golovnev, Samuel King
    Conference on Information-Theoretic Cryptography (ITC) 2024.
  2. Quantum routing with fast reversals (arXiv)
    Aniruddha Bapat, Andrew M. Childs, Alexey V. Gorshkov, Samuel King, Eddie Schoute, Hrishee Shastri
    Quantum 2021.
  3. Rainbow numbers for x_1+x_2=kx_3 in Z_n (arXiv)
    Erin Bevilacqua, Samuel King, Jürgen Kritschgau, Michael Tait, Suzannah Tebon, Michael Young
    Integers: Electronic Journal of Combinatorial Number Theory 2020.

Teaching

  • Intro to Algorithms, Georgetown University, Fall 2024 - TA
  • Math Methods for CS, Georgetown University, Spring 2024 - TA and Lecturer
  • Intro to Databases, Georgetown University, Fall 2023 - TA and Lecturer
  • New Horizons in TCS, TTIC, Summer 2023 - TA
  • Graduate Algebra I, University of Rochester, Fall 2020 - TA and Lecturer
  • Honors Calculus II (Freshman Real Analysis), University of Rochester, Springs 2018-2020 - TA and Workshop Leader
  • Honors Calculus I (Freshman Real Analysis), University of Rochester, Falls 2017-2019 - TA and Workshop Leader

About

I live in Arlington, VA with my wife and our two wonderful cats, Kala and Calypso.

Outside of work, you'll find me rock climbing, hiking, and running TTRPGs for friends and family. Recently, I've been volunteering at the local library to run Dungeons & Dragons sessions for elementary and middle schoolers.

I grew up near Erie, PA and went to school in Rochester, NY. Yes, I miss the snow.