Miles Morgan Shuman

Current:
Research Assistant / Technical Programmer
Kanwisher Lab, Department of Brain & Cognitive Science
Massachussetts Institute of Technology

In September 2002:
PhD Student
Carey / Spelke Lab, Psychology Department
Harvard University

AGE: 24 HEIGHT: 5'11" WEIGHT: 145 lb EYE COLOR: Variable HAIR COLOR: Dark Brown HAIR LENGTH: 0" DATE OF BIRTH: June 5, 1978 PLACE OF BIRTH: Philadelphia, PA CURRENT RESIDENCE: Cambridge, MA

Well . . . The first notable thing that happened in my life was that I quit school, after first grade. I homeschooled from second grade through eighth, and I think homeschooling was really integral to me becoming who I am. Starting in ninth grade I went to Central High School. It was something less than ok. What was truly great, though, was quitting. If you ever have the chance, you should quit high-school. It's so awesome. I homeschooled again, after leaving high-school midway through my Junior year.

In August 1994, when I was 16, I started out on a four and a half month back-packing trip around the world, with my father. It was an extraordinary experience. We spent about one month in New Zealand, Australia, and elsewhere in the South Pacific, two months in Eastern and Southern Africa, and one month in Southern and Western Europe.

I started in at Caltech, as a physics major, when I was 17 (in the fall of 1995.) I guess I'm old enough that tech's becoming history, which is scary. Anyway, it was at the same time great, and hella' painful. The great parts were Dabney House, which I was president of in '98, the Caltech Baseball Team, which now has a twelve year conference losing streak in (84 consecutive conference losses while I was playing,) and working in Andrew Lange's Observational Cosmology Group for my senior thesis project - building a cosmic microwave background polarimeter. The painful part was all the work.

I graduated (on time!) with a B.S. in Physics, in 1999 - it was the first time in my life that I'd graduated from anything.

I spent the next year in the Washington, D.C. area, working as an engineer for a biotech company called IGEN, building an ultra-high-throughput electrochemiluminescence reader ... which may one day be used for drug-discovery in the pharmaceutical industry, if it's ever released.

A year and a day from when I started at IGEN, I quit, to come up here to Boston as a research assistant in the Brain & Cog Department of MIT. It's been awesome! You, too, should quit your job in industry and do something cool and fun. My main research interests are in developmental mathematical cognition, and applications to education. I'll be leaving MIT this summer, and starting as a PhD student at Harvard in the fall, in the Developmental Cognitive Psychology groups of Liz Spelke and Susan Carey.

My family

The music I listen to.

Some things I've read recently.

A Photo

My Car, which has 244,000 miles on it.