Areas of Impact
- Systems Engineering & Complex Decision-Making
Global Challenge: Data Science/AI/Robotics
A true Global Leader acts in accordance with virtuous principles; among the most important of these are selflessness, conscientiousness, and kindness. The enactment of these three critical principles is what drives a Global Leader’s positive impact on his or her immediate community, wider environment, and human society as a whole.
Bio:
Evan Brody originally hails from Tunkhannock, a small town in the Pennsylvanian stretch of the Appalachian mountains. Currently, he is a senior at Tandon double majoring in mathematics and computer science. Evan has a strong interest in research and teaching, and plans to pursue a PhD focused on theoretical computer science after he graduates; Evan is one of five students selected for the pilot year of the NextGenPhD Scholars program at Tandon. His research interests center on algorithms for optimization, especially under uncertainty.
Evan spent the summer of 2023 participating in the Cloud Computing Security and Privacy NSF REU at Boise State University alongside eight other undergraduates from various institutions. At BSU, he worked with another student researcher to prepare software for, and conduct a user study on, user privacy in augmented reality. Evan and his collaborator’s work was based on a then-recent Master’s thesis that proposed overlays called “Virtual Curtains” to hide sensitive objects in a user’s environment from detection by augmented reality apps.
In the summer of 2024, he was a participant in the Industrial Mathematics and Statistics NSF REU at Worcester Polytechnic Institute; Evan was part of a group of six students divided between two industry-sponsored projects. He developed system reliability software alongside two other students in a project sponsored by Collins Aerospace; his research specifically focused on applying dynamic graph algorithms to reliability engineering.
Since the spring of 2025, Evan has been working with Prof. Lisa Hellerstein of the Theoretical Computer Science Group at NYU on the design and analysis of algorithms for stochastic combinatorial optimization; specifically, their focus is on algorithms for optimally, or near-optimally, sequencing queries or probes. This included full-time participation in the NYU Tandon Undergraduate Summer Research Program in the summer of 2025.
Evan is also interested in mentorship and teaching. During the school year, he works as a recruiter for GLASS and as a teaching assistant for Object-Oriented Programming (CS-UY 2124) and Artificial Intelligence (CS-UY 4613).
