My name is Andrew Scott Barr.

Hello and welcome to my website.

I was born in 1990 in Washington D.C. and have lived in the D.C. area and the Seattle area, spending my teen and undergraduate years in Seattle area. I am an undergraduate in Applied and Computational Math Sciences at the University of Washington.

My current studies and research at the University of Washington focus on applied math and high performance computing (HPC). My current research group, under professor Nathan Kutz, is creating software for American Sign Language recognition on smartphones. I recently was awarded a Mary Gates Scholarship to support this. I have been privileged to take a number of graduate courses as an undergraduate, and am currently applying to graduate programs in applied math.

I have a strong interest in pedagogy that comes from 7 years working as a piano teacher and actually look forward to being able to teach.

I am really interested in wiki-style collaboration and attended the last international Wikimedia conference. I have spent time in Brazil, Colombia, Peru, and most recently in Israel where I was involved in image processing research at the Technion. My next destination is an applied math PhD program where I will be working on computational problems in renewable energy. As for travel, I am open to going to any place where interesting science is taking place where it is feasible for me to receive funding. Google Summer of Code is pretty sweet too! On the side, I am interested language processing research (currently brainstorming with some linguistic students), volunteering, investigating science policy, and studying languages.

I entered Bellevue Community College (BCC) when I was 16 through the Running Start program. During my first quarter, I took a 10-credit English course that remains my favorite college level course to this day. I was active in the Philosophy Club, LACC (Latin American Cultural Club), and poetry readings from the English department. I had over 20 piano students during my time there, worked at a skateboarding shop and promoted concerts, and maintained a 3.84 GPA, taking night classes at times. At that time, I was very interested in botany and grew the following plants from Peru: Aji Amarillo, Rocoto, Aji Cereza, Huacatay, Lucuma (only sprouts), and Maiz Morado (email me if you would like germination/growing tips!). I am currently working to start a SACNAS chapter there in preparation for the upcoming SACNAS 2012 conference in Seattle and maintain contact with my teachers there. Note: Bellevue Community College is now Bellevue College (BC)

I entered UW unsure of what I wanted to study. I entered Pre-MAP (Pre-Majors in Astronomy Program) and took Latin American Political Economy. Both were fascinating but I ended up more interested in the astronomy, declaring a physics/astronomy major for my first two years. I presented research (see the Research page) on LLE at the Undergraduate Research Symposium and at the 2009 SACNAS conference. After that, I became very interested in math, inspired by geometry and logic. These topics are calculus of variations, image processing, wavelets, and partial differential equations. This year I received a Mary Gates Scholarship and am continuing research with Professor J. Nathan Kutz. I am the founder and president of the Applied Math Club UW.

My CV contains more information on my academic career.

I am currently applying to some PhD programs in Applied Math. See my Grad School page for more! I am slated for June 2012 graduation. I am open for Summer/Spring research projects anywhere in the world, especially if funding is available! I am an applicant for the Krell Institute CGSF. I am applying for a Franklin Fellowship, Foreign Service Test, and investigating internship with state science policymakers. Working to create a team for the UW Environmental Engineering Challenge and entered the Shobe Prize contest.

• My Research Interests page, with contents and abstracts. I also link resources that I have found helpful.
• My Code page, showing code I have written.
• My Grad School page, talking about the applications I have submitted for grad school
• My Other Interests page, showing links to everything from cooking, playlists, books I've read, and more.

PHONE: (425)829-7011

EMAIL: andyasb(at)uw(dot)edu (This also works for gchat)

Skype: andysbarr

I teach piano Tuesday and Thursday afternoon and evenings. I teach Saturday morning in Redmond and Sunday morning in Kirkland. Otherwise, I am easily available by appointment, my de facto office being the nice tables at SoulFood Books or the Kirkland Zoka. I try to leave Seattle before 5 on most days.