About me

Hey there. First things first, if you're looking for something formal and straight to the point to read, my CV is right over here. This is a much more artsy and personal description of myself. Not something I'd give in an interview, so to say.

Still here? Neat. I like your spirit. I started this piece expecting that writing it would be more of a chore than challenge, but if the quote at the top of this page didn't give it away, I'm a little odd and more than a little artsy. It also just so happens that my specific brand of odd has a certain fascination with good prose, abstract and symbolic art and theatrics, so a normal description of myself was never really an option.

But let's rewind a bit and start from the bottom. Hey! I'm Sam. I'm an Italian student currently living in Trieste (north-eastern edge of Italy, on the border with Slovenia) studying Physics at a bachelor's level. It is very much not my only interest, but it is certainly fighting for the top spot among my favorites. I'm usually quiet with most people and a pretty good listener, but lately I've been trying to have a bit more initiative. You'll usually find me either doing something productive while listening to music (usually studying, programming or writing) or lost in thoughts.

I'll be completely honest and say the original reason why I fell in love with this specific subject has almost certainly been lost to the inexorable march of time, but I suppose that scarcely matters as I found many other reasons as time flew by. Most importantly though, I am a generalist. I like many things, and what better subject to know many things than the one that studies the founding tenets of our universe? (You might argue philosophy; I certainly did. I spent the better part of my first university year debating whether I should drop out of physics to switch to philosophy, but the prospect of actually finding a job was too appealing to leave behind. (I'm only half-joking))

Physics is also a massively broad field, with numerous specializations that are surprisingly far from each other considering they're all born from the same core principles. As I learnt new things and my goals and interests shifted, I've wandered to and fro in the domains of this subject, and today I can pretty safely say that, despite my love for it, I don't believe I am made for research. Since my days fawning over the stars and astrophysics (still do, actually), I've change my mind a solid four times when it comes to my choice of career. From astrophysics, to its twin sibling cosmology and the wonderfully mixed bags of computational physics and complex system physics, I've come to accept that my interests lie not in pen and paper but in byte and code.

In fact, I've always been a bit of a poor fit for anything with rigid confines. Despite physics being extraordinarily broad, I still set out to seek answers and work myself, beyond what I would be taught within the confines of formal education. I've been doing this for a while now and while it's been... time-consuming to say the least, I don't really regret it. On the way, I've developed a wide and varied skillset, entirely on top of the one I'm expected to have due to my education, and have developed a real fascination with finding the connections in things. Knowing information in a vacuum can be useful and all, but my brain works by putting things together like pieces of a puzzle.

As it stands, I am convinced of taking a parallel path to that of physics. While research is not my goal, I still enjoy theoretical studies, but mostly when they are highly general. It's why I've progressively gotten more and more interested in applied math itself over its direct applications in physics. But I also spend a very large amount of time programming and making things from scratch in my free time, so while I could accept the idea of leaving my interests as a hobby for high school and even my bachelor's, it's come to the point where it would be frankly insane to take all of the work I've done to build up computer skills over... seven years now? (God I'm old.) And just let it be a hobby. So, I've took the decision of looking for something that could mix my interests. Mathematics to be rigorous and programming to be practical and result-oriented. Something along the lines of scientific computing, HPC and the like.

This makes a bit of a jack of all trades; while I may not be world-class in any particular thing, I have a breadth of skills that makes me great at solving mixed-domain problems that would leave many others disoriented. Case in point, you are reading an artsy prose description on a remarkably fast website with a pretty interface containing unrelated works suchs as photography (above) and worldbuilding (right), not to mention the projects on other pages of this website. All my work, to boast.

Of course, despite having broad interests, I still have my preferences. Unsurprisingly, my academic interests are pretty much all in areas of deep interplay between subjects (even if it's just at broad, conceptual level). Scientific computation is the meeting point of math and computer science, cosmology is perpetually in flux between physics, philosophy and theology, neural computation is a mixing ground of math, computers, neuroscience and psychology, and I could go on, but this is already getting a little too long.

To end this off, believe it or not I actually have (somewhat) normal interests too. I like music a lot (mostly videogame soundtracks, classical and alt rock/punk rock). When I'm not tinkering in a code editor for fun (see the projects for more), I play tabletop RPGs (think D&D and the like) and niche videogames. I like organizing events for friends and meeting people with different interests than me, especially if they are willing to have long conversations about the things that they are passionate about. Oh and I like writing. Could you tell? I've been writing for almost a decade.