Our Summer Research Associates in 2026
Summer brings a new group of talented Summer Research Associates (RAs) to Topos. As they begin their projects, we invited each of them to share a little about themselves, their interests, and the work they’ll be pursuing.
The arrival of a new group of Summer Research Associates (RAs) is always a highlight of the year at Topos. Alongside their research abilities and technical expertise, they bring fresh perspectives that strengthen our culture and broaden the conversations taking place across the organization. These appointments are an important part of our efforts to support emerging researchers and build a vibrant academic community. We are thrilled to welcome this year’s cohort.
Michael Arntzenius is a postdoc at UC Berkeley studying programming languages, database query languages, and how to combine them. He’s also interested in incremental computation: how to do less work by reusing old work and paying attention to what changed.
Matt Cuffaro is research software developer and an incoming Masters student in Mathematics at the University of Florida. He’s at Topos this summer collaborating with Evan Patterson and Kevin Carlson to support “instances of modal double models” in CatColab, a type of document whose objects are instantiations of objects in other model. This brings CatColab closer to one motivating goal, which is compiling instance documents into systems of differential equations.
Aaron Huntley is a 2nd Year pure math PhD student at Case Western Reserve University. They are trying to understand connections between various kinds of double (co)limits and a theory of double presentability. This summer they have begun working with Evan and Kevin defining unbiased (co)products for virtual double categories using the family construction. Outside of math Aaron loves to play and watch soccer, explore the world, and learn different languages.
Bryce Goldman is an engineering RA working on CatColab’s Double TT project with Evan Patterson this summer. He will be implementing a DSL for specifying modal theories and refining the TT package using a type theory for virtual double categories. Bryce recently completed his M.S. in computer science at Stanford, and is broadly interested in compilers, programming languages, and formal methods (and applications of category theory therein).
Khyathi Komalan is a rising junior studying mathematics at Caltech. She enjoys thinking about ways to use category theory to solve structural problems in quantum field theory. This summer, she is working with Kevin Carlson and Brendan Fong to make DOTS more accessible by creating expository materials and a worked example of a safeguarded AI workflow. Outside of math and physics, she spends her time exploring different cuisines, urban exploring, and having philosophical discussions with friends.