Biography
I am a researcher at Snorkel AI. I was previously a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University. I recieved my BS from Stony Brook University.
Outside of work, my hobbies include playing cello and powerlifting. I also used to solve Rubik’s cubes competitively.
Interests
- Machine learning
- Optimization
- Information science
- Agentic AI
Education
PhD (Incomplete)
Carnegie Mellon University
MS, Artificial Intelligence, 2026
Carnegie Mellon University
BS, Applied Mathematics & Statistics, 2024
Stony Brook University
Work Experience
](/media/icons/brands/snorkel_ai.svg){kind=icon}
Research Intern
](/media/icons/brands/cloudflare.svg){kind=icon}
Research Intern
](/media/icons/brands/mitll.svg){kind=icon}
Research Intern
](/media/icons/brands/lbnl.svg){kind=icon}
Research Intern
Research Experience
Independent Researcher
Independent Researcher
Graduate Student Researcher
Advisor: Prof. Sean Qian
](/media/icons/brands/Stony%20Brook%20Logo%20Small.svg){kind=icon}
Undergraduate Student Researcher
Advisor: Prof. Susu Xu
Undergraduate Student Researcher
Advisor: Prof. Benjamin S. Hsiao
Journal Publications
(2026).
Multi-Criteria Pathfinding for High-Speed Rail: A Computational Geospatial Analysis of the Albany–New York City Corridor.
Case Studies on Transport Policy.
(2024).
Probing the Self-Assembly Dynamics of Cellulose Nanocrystals by X-ray Photon Correlation Spectroscopy.
Journal of Colloid and Interface Science.
Conference Publications
(2025).
Large Scale Integrated Simulation of Household Vehicle Fleet Composition with Geographically Explicit Synthetic Population.
The 13th IEEE International Conference on Big Data (IEEE BigData 2025).
(2022).
Discovering and Understanding Algorithmic Biases in Autonomous Pedestrian Trajectory Predictions.
Proceedings of the 20th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys 2022).
Teaching Experience
Teaching Assistant:
- 12760 - Fundamentals of Programming, Carnegie Mellon University, Spring 2025
- AMS 341 - Linear Programming, Stony Brook University, Fall 2023
- CSE 214 - Data Structures, Stony Brook University, Spring 2023
- HON 101 - Honors College Freshman Seminar, Stony Brook University, Fall 2022
- AMS 326 - Numerical Analysis, Stony Brook University, Summer 2021
Awards and Honors
Selected Awards:
- Y Combinator Startup School (Jul 25-27 @ Chase Center, SF), 2026
- GEM Fellowship, 2025
- Award of Honor, Stony Brook Department of Applied Math and Statistics, 2024
- SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Student Excellence, 2024 [SBU News]
- Tau Beta Pi Schlarship, 2023
- Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, 2023 [SBU News]
- Undergraduate Researcher of the Month (April), Stony Brook University, 2023 [Interview] [SBU News]
Other Awards:
- Graduate Student Service Award Honorable Mention, Carnegie Mellon University, 2026
- Innovation Hackathon Peoples’ Choice Award, Gresham Smith x Carnegie Mellon, 2026 [CMU Article]
- AACE International NE Region Scholarship, 2026
- Steven J. Fenves Travel Grant, Carnegie Mellon University, 2025
- AWS re:Invent All Builders Welcome Grant, Amazon Web Services, 2025
- Weinig Foundation Scholarship, Stony Brook University, 2023
- URECA Research Travel Grant, Stony Brook University, 2022
- URECA Summer Research Scholarship, Stony Brook University, 2022
- PSEG Exploratons in STEM Scholarship, Stony Brook University, 2021
- URECA Summer Research Scholarship, Stony Brook University, 2021
- Presidential Scholarship, Stony Brook University, 2019
- Honors College, Stony Brook University, 2019
- Honor Graduate, Shaker High School, 2019
Honor Societies:
- Chi Epsilon, 2025
- Phi Beta Kappa, 2024
- Sigma Xi, 2024
- Tau Beta Pi, 2021
Contact
- abae@andrew.cmu.edu
- San Francisco Bay Area, USA, Earth
- linkedin.com/in/werdnabae