Nick Zufelt is an Instructor in Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science, a House Counselor in Stevens House, and an advisor for the BRACE Board. As a Tang Institute Fellow, Zufelt co-founded the Ethi{CS} project to introduce ethical thinking into the classroom. He received a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin and has done extensive research on topics including manifolds and astrophysics. He enjoys game design, systems thinking, and finding meaningful connections within the Andover community.
What initially drew you to Andover?
I finished my graduate degree, then I went into a postdoc in London, so I lived in London for one school year. At that time I was doing that research, and I was considering doing more research or teaching… This teaching position [at Andover] came up around the same time I was teaching myself coding because of the very possible option that I didn’t get a math position, which is fantastically hard to get. I was learning a lot of machine learning, data science, and computer science. I took a class in college about it, but I am mostly self-taught… This position came up, it was a position that was partially math, partially CS, and I jumped on it cause it sounded great.
Do you have any advice for students interested in Computer Science and learning how to code?
I always tell my students at the start of a CS class that the wealth of material you ought to learn on your own online is much stronger in computer science than basically any other field. You can learn to code anywhere online, and you can learn to put anything online. “So then, what are you doing in class?” I think that’s reasonable to ask and this is what I always try to talk with students at the beginning of the term. You’re getting not just access to the teacher, but access to a cohort of people, so you really need to lean into that aspect of the course if you want to get anything useful out of it at all, because you can just learn this stuff online. If you want to learn it well and learn how to collaborate and communicate with others and code, build, and think abstractly, you need a lot of the other things that complement the coding skill that most high-school students think of. But computer science is more than just learning to code.
Do you think that an AI takeover is possible?
Anything related to the singularity and stuff, I would argue, is worth thinking about from a theoretical perspective, but there are much more pressing issues related to AI that we should probably spend real resources on. For example, huge problems with bias in AI and other sorts of present-day issues. Is it possible? Sure, but the future is so hard to predict… I think all technology has the potential to cause more harm than [it] currently does. People who are creators of technology…need to think responsibly about it. Therefore, as a teacher of someone, the teacher of people who are using technology, that’s something that we think a lot about in classes. Technology exists to consolidate power, that’s what technology’s job is… With that larger consolidation of power, you need to make sure that you are using it to do good in the world.
What is Ethi{CS}, and what did you do during your time as a Tang Fellow?
So the Ethi{CS} project has been in existence for many years now… Dr. [Kiran] Bhardwaj, [Department Chair of Religion and Philosophy] and I co-founded it. Originally, it started out as working to meaningfully incorporate ethical thinking into a CS classroom. There are two major things we are trying to avoid with [Ethi{CS}]. The first is setting up structures so that students feel like, “Oh man, it’s time to put my ethics hat on,” and then happily taking that hat off to go back to doing the, quote-unquote, “real work of coding.” Trying to show students that this work is the ‘real work’ and it’s important. Building projects that are simultaneously technically and ethically rigorous is one of the main goals, and then the other goal is to center the ethical work, so you’re not saying, “Shame on you Facebook,” but you’re thinking about the work that you do… Thinking through that kind of question is a much more important question for a high school student to be wrestling with than “ought the government shut down Facebook.” Maybe we can have that conversation, but that is aside. We need to focus on the harm that we might cause first.
You have a background in research, especially earlier on in your education, for example with cluster galaxies. Why did you choose to research that, and what did you find out?
That was actually for when I was an undergraduate. The National Science Foundation (NSF) has this program, the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU), so I did a summer project at the University of Rochester. I was part of two papers out of that, which makes me sound more of an astrophysicist than I actually am… I had a research advisor who ran the whole thing. She had multiple postdocs that worked for her and they had multiple grad students working for them and then we were like the army of undergrads that worked for the graduate students. So this kind of hierarchy of thinking was really fascinating. You get these precious few moments with the professor that’s the head researcher for the project. I remember learning to be super prepared because, unlike Andover, where people go talk to any of these amazing researchers and thinkers on campus whenever you want, I had 20 minutes a day over the summer where I could [talk to the professor]… Thinking about “how do you prepare for these really important moments with people” was probably the [skill] I learned the most, which has nothing to do with physics, but it was really useful.
Do you have any unique hobbies?
I’m a big fan of all kinds of games: Board games, card games, video games, you name it. But in particular, I really like learning a new game. I teach a game development class on campus and we focus a lot on the idea of what makes a game compelling, fun, and interesting. To me, I love the beginning stages of, “I have no idea what this game is, let’s see what it has to offer,” and that can be anything. I mean you can have the same kind of experience in a math block, these things that are game-like in math. When my kids get a new board game, I love to just read the instructions, which sounds so nerdy, and I know it’s super nerdy, but this whole idea of “Let’s see if we can go from ‘this is a mystery to me’ to ‘I understand this system.’” Games are like micro-systems in a way. I say my hobby is games but more importantly, it’s learning about games.
You have done a lot of research. Do you have any advice for people who want to navigate the hierarchy of research?
There are two things I would say about that. The first is, you have to be genuinely curious about the topic that you’re researching. You can tell, everyone else can tell. If you’re just doing it to check the research box, if you’re not genuinely curious, not only can people tell, but also your work won’t be as good. You have to actually have some real curiosity. So read. Ask questions. Ask second questions, ask more follow-up questions. Just keep diving down these rabbit holes, that’s what being a researcher is all about. The other thing is to find the relevant professors who are doing awesome work in this category. Don’t bother emailing them, they are not going to respond. Find their graduate students and write to them. Because graduate students might be like “Oh cool! I’m important in the world now! I have undergraduates and high school students writing to me and asking me questions!” They are connected to these excellent researchers. They are becoming excellent researchers and so they will relish the opportunity to answer your questions.
You wrote your PhD thesis on the combinatorics of reducible Dehn Surgery. What is that about, and what inspired your interest in it?
The idea is actually relatively straightforward, but truly explaining my thesis topics would take a super long time… When you stand somewhere on the earth, you look around, you can look north, south, east, or west. Locally it looks like a sheet, but the people who then say “Therefore the whole world is flat,” we call those people flat earthers, and we mock them. However, we all make the same mistake about the Universe. You can go above or below the orbital plane, forward or backward along the orbital path of the earth, or to and away from the sun. Locally it is three dimensions, so therefore the whole universe is in three dimensions. You can go in that direction for all time. That is the same mistake flat earthers make and yet we’re all cool with it. So there is no reason to suggest that the universe doesn’t eventually turn, right? So there’s no reason to suggest that the universe doesn’t eventually wrap around on itself like the surface of a sphere… You can kind of interpret it as being, “What are all the potential finite or closed options for what the universe could be?”
How long did it take you to learn computer science?
I’ve been coding on and off for about my whole life. I coded on an Apple TV when I was in first grade, but never very serious[ly] until this one year of a postdoc; I sort of transitioned my topic over towards that so that I could learn a lot of the coding stuff along the way. Going back, I had a little bit of programming in elementary school, but my fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Schaffer, changed my life. She had this system where every Friday she would crash course us through the whole next week’s math content like “boom, boom, boom here’s 20 minutes, let’s go as fast as possible through the math.” That was all we did on Friday. On Monday she would give us a test on that content and if we aced that test, we were quote-unquote “exempt” from math for the week. Then we could work on the computers and whatever programming stuff we wanted to. So I worked my butt off in order to actually get the computer rather than do math worksheets.
Who is someone that’s inspired you and what did you learn from them?
My PhD advisor, Cameron Gordon, was an absolute legend, and one of the nicest people I have ever met. Wildly smart and infinitely patient. Really cool guy… [I learned] so much literal math, content-wise obviously. But then just a lot of how to strive for humility in all situations. Every room he entered he was probably the smartest person in, and yet you could never tell that he felt that way. He is incredibly smart yet incredibly down-to-earth with every conversation he has. He was such an inspiration… I try to [mimic his teaching style]. He was really funny too, he has all these stories. One thing I do that mimics him is that I tell a lot of stories from my random past as well, a thing that a lot of teachers do. Every once in a while, a student in class or in the dorm will be like, “Oh yeah we just learned some Nick lore.”
