My name is Andrei. I’m originally from Riga, Latvia, but have been in the U.S. for most of my life. At any given moment, what I would enjoy most would be thinking about science, and doing so beside a campfire in the woods, or while hiking in Utah. I enjoy my research greatly and look forward to expanding it, and I enjoy teaching and watching students’ curiosity exceed the content of a formal course. I also love nature, music, and the philosophy of science, and I’m grateful for any time I can spend with my friends and family.

 I am humorous, but the law bids me write seriously. I am audacious, but the law commands that my style be modest. Grey, all grey, is the sole, the rightful colour of freedom. Every drop of dew on which the sun shines glistens with an inexhaustible play of colours, but the spiritual sun, however many the persons and whatever the objects in which it is refracted, must produce only the official colour! The most essential form of the spirit is cheerfulness, light, but you make shadow the sole manifestation of the spirit; it must be clothed only in black, yet among flowers there are no black ones. The essence of the spirit is always truth itself but what do you make its essence? Modesty. (Karl Marx, On Prussian Censorship)