Born in New Jersey and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Ashvin hails from a family of mathematicians. He attended The Harker School, where he demonstrated a strong commitment to excellence in a broad range of academic subjects. He received perfect SAT scores, won the Siemens AP Science award, and graduated as valedictorian of his high school class. As an undergraduate at Harvard, Ashvin concentrated in mathematics, receiving early election to Phi Beta Kappa, graduating summa cum laude, and winning the David Mumford prize for most promising math major. In addition to excelling at his coursework, he authored ten research papers on a diverse collection of mathematical topics, from number theory to combinatorics to algebraic geometry. For this research, he received the Frank and Brennie Morgan Prize, the highest national honor given to math undergraduates. After Harvard, Ashvin went on to receive his PhD in math from Princeton under the supervision of Fields medalist Manjul Bhargava. As a graduate student, he was supported by the PD Soros Fellowship for New Americans and the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. He is currently a post-doctoral fellow in the math department at Harvard, and his research centers on arithmetic statistics, the study of the distribution of objects of importance in number theory and geometry.
Over the past 15 years, Ashvin has built up a significant depth of teaching experience and has taught/tutored math to students of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities. He started in middle school by tutoring calculus and AP Physics to students in his neighborhood. Subsequently, while an undergraduate at Harvard, Ashvin served as a course assistant and substitute instructor for six different advanced math courses, including the notorious Math 55. While a graduate student at Princeton, Ashvin worked as an assistant instructor, teaching sections of linear algebra to undergraduates and local high school students. He also collaborated with the Davis International Center at Princeton to advise immigrant students on how to navigate applying to graduate schools and fellowships in the US. At present, Ashvin serves as a volunteer tutor at the Cambridge Learning Center, working with adult learners who seek to improve their job prospects by honing basic math skills. He believes in formulating a personalized approach to teaching each student, so as to best cater to their needs, goals, and interests. Through his teaching, Ashvin hopes to spread his passion for math and to realize his conviction that math has the power to unify people of all backgrounds and interests under the common banner of seeking truth, depth, and wisdom in all their pursuits.
In his spare time, you can usually find Ashvin playing the violin, going to classical music concerts, traveling the world, or perusing the galleries at the Museum of Fine Arts.
