Šimon Podhajský

I was born in Prague in 1991. In 2011, I graduated "twice" - both the Maturita and the International Baccalaureate programmes - from the bilingual Open Gate Boarding School. At high school, I mostly engaged in academic debate: my team and I were the champions of the World Online Debate Championship, the runner-ups at EurOpen 2011, and double victors in the National Debate League. (Since then, I guided the Czech National Team towards victory in International Public Policy Forum (IPPF 2011-12) and towards a sweet 16 placement in IPPF 2014-15.) My favorite topics to talk about? Data science, the aims of education, the vacuity of nationalism, and anything else you can think of. Since August 2011, I have studied at Yale due to generous support of Bakala Foundation; I major in Cognitive Science with a focus on behavioral modeling and irrational decision-making. (If I were to pick deities, I'd pick Kahneman and Tversky.) Outside of my studies, I enjoy photography and work for Yale as a Ruby on Rails team lead. In Fall 2015, I continue to work with Yale Effective Altruists, who try to make altruism as smart and as effective as possible. At the same time, I'm finishing my studies with a senior essay on the relationship between ambiguity tolerance and learning rate.