hi! I'm Lain

I am a first year CS PhD student at UT Austin, advised by Dr. Keshav Pingali at the Center for Distributed and Grid Computing at the Oden Institute.

My research focuses on reinforcement learning, evolutionary computation, and ML for systems.

During my undergraduate years I worked at the intersection of cybersecurity and machine learning. I completed my MS thesis on Evolutionary Policy Optimization under the supervision of Dr. Keshav Pingali and Dr. Risto Miikkulainen at UT Austin.

I am from Ankara, Turkey. You might also know me as Zelal.

interests

• music (trip hop, metal, rock)
• racing, formula 1, cars (i daily drive a camaro)
• games (bioshock, ultimate ninja storm, arkham trilogy, etc.)
• aviation
• objectivism

tidbits about me

• favorite movie: Exit Through The Gift Shop
• favorite book: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
• favorite paper: Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms