website/content/now.md

---
title: Now
Description: Recent Happenings in Brandon Rozek's life
---

[*This is a now page, it's meant to showcase what's been going on in my life
recently. If you have a website, consider creating one as well*](https://nownownow.com/about)

Date: June 15, 2024


It's been two years since I've updated this page! Time goes by fast.

**Professional:** I'm well into the PhD program at this point. I've been fortunate enough to receive the NDSEG fellowship which funds my work, as well as many wonderful collaborators.

This summer, I'm an applied scientist intern at Amazon Web Services. I work on the [Cedar project](https://www.cedarpolicy.com/) which is under Automated Reasoning in Identities. I'm especially excited at the oppurtunity to write Lean code.


**Personal Life:** For the internship, I moved out to San Jose, California. The biggest surprise to me is just how blue the sky is almost every day!

There's a lot to explore here. I'm making edits on [OpenStreetMap](https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Brandon%20Rozek/) using the Street Complete application on Android along the way.

---
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Date: May 15, 2022

**Professional:** I started my PhD program back in August 2021.
So far, I've met many wonderful people including
but not limited to the folks at the RAIR lab which
I'm now a part of.

For my first two semesters I was a teaching assistant.
The first was Introduction to Computer Science and the
second was Principles of Software.
Both of these classes had what I would consider a large amount
of students (> 300), which meant that there were multiple TAs
splitting the class into smaller lab/recitation sections.
Honestly those labs and recitations were the best part of the TAing experience.

In Summer 2022, I will be at IBM Research in Yorktown Heights, NY.
I'm looking forward to having more research dedicated time.

**Personal Life:** Living in Upstate NY, this is the coldest winter I've been through.
There are many of you in far colder places, but I was not mentally prepared for the
constant 15 degrees Fahrenheit weather.
What helped keep me warm:
- Window Insulator Kit (lowers the amount of heat escape)
- Thermal underlayers (top and bottom)
- Soup (Nice and warm)
- Heated Blanket (much cheaper than a space heater)
- Snow spikes (for hiking in the winter)

Now that we're approaching summer again,
I look forward to going on more hikes.
You can check out some of the trails I completed on my
[AllTrails profile](https://www.alltrails.com/members/brandon-rozek/completed).