In this episode of the fAQ Podcast, host Tai-Danae Bradley sits down with Daniel Litt, an assistant professor of mathematics at the University of Toronto, to discuss the rapidly evolving intersection of AI and mathematics. Bypassing the public speculation and social media hype, this conversation provides a practical look at some ways large language models are actively being used in high-level mathematical research. Daniel shares his daily workflow, detailing his transition from testing early AI models in a Dungeons and Dragons game to currently utilizing advanced tools for literature search, "vibe coding," and finding counterexamples. The discussion also covers the new challenge of "proof abundance," practical tips for prompting AI effectively, and how these powerful tools might force a necessary restructuring of mathematical education and the academic publishing system.

Links

• Learn more about Daniel here: https://www.daniellitt.com
• Follow Daniel on X: https://x.com/littmath

About this podcast

This podcast is hosted by Tai-Danae Bradley and features the stories of amazing people working in science and technology at SandboxAQ and beyond. All curious humans are invited to join!

Want to get in touch? Write us at [email protected]

For previous episodes, check out https://www.youtube.com/@sandboxaq

In this episode of the fAQ podcast, Tai-Danae sits down with Jonathan Corbiere, the co-founder and CEO of Thought Cafe, an award-winning animation and design studio, to discuss the crucial role of visual storytelling in the age of deep tech.

Jon shares his fascinating journey from being a kid with dreams of becoming an astronaut—a path unexpectedly changed by a colorblindness diagnosis—to becoming a master visual translator for complex scientific ideas. Tai-Danae and Jon dive into how his early love for Michael Crichton and Star Trek shaped his worldview, and why he believes that today's science fiction is rapidly becoming our science reality.

They also discuss a profound realization Jon had after hearing a lecture by David Suzuki: why it shouldn't just be the scientist's job to communicate the reality of crises and technological breakthroughs to the public. Plus, Jon gives us a sneak peek into Amplified Intelligence, his highly creative new podcast that features a tuned AI agent as an active co-host!

Tune in for an inspiring conversation about lifelong learning, the power of communication, and why we should start thinking of AI not as "artificial," but as an amplification of the human spirit.

Links

• Follow Jon on LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/jonathoncorbiere
• Subscribe to Thought Cafe’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/ThoughtBubbler
• View Thought Cafe’s work for SandboxAQ: https://www.thoughtcafe.ca/sandboxaq

About this podcast

This podcast is hosted by Tai-Danae Bradley and features the stories of amazing people working in science and technology at SandboxAQ and beyond. All curious humans are invited to join!

Want to get in touch? Write us at [email protected]

For previous episodes, check out https://www.youtube.com/@sandboxaq

What does the next generation of deep tech leadership look like? In this episode of the fAQ podcast, Tai-Danae sits down with Natashia Kaur Raina, a senior at IIT Madras and a rising star in the quantum computing space. From growing up in a house filled wall-to-wall with books in Chennai, India, to balancing a myriad of professional and academic roles, Natashia shares where her incredible drive comes from.

We dive into how an early love for astrophysics paved the way for her fascination with quantum mechanics. Natashia discusses the moment she realized she needed to start her own YouTube channel in December 2023 to help democratize quantum education. She also walks us through her current endeavors, including her work as a quantum security research engineer at Vyapati, building her EdTech startup NucleQi, and writing upcoming books on quantum machine learning and cryptography. She also opens up about the dangers of overthinking and shares the leadership maturity she’s developed to achieve extreme focus—learning to stop worrying about the future, quiet her mind, and give 100% of her energy to the present moment.

Whether you're a student trying to break into deep tech or just someone looking for motivation to stop overthinking and start doing, Natashia's ambition—which stretches all the way to dreams of a Nobel Prize—will leave you inspired.

Links

• Follow Natashia on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kiran-kaur-raina-b2922622a/
• Subscribe to her YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@NatashiaKaurRaina/videos
• Watch Natashia’s first, and most popular, video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCkYT5VIQLQ

About this podcast

This podcast is hosted by Tai-Danae Bradley and features the stories of amazing people working in science and technology at SandboxAQ and beyond. All curious humans are invited to join!

Want to get in touch? Write us at [email protected]

For previous episodes, check out https://www.youtube.com/@sandboxaq

In our next episode of the fAQ podcast, Tai-Danae Bradley sits down with SandboxAQ's Eneko Axpe to explore the creative and resilient mindset required to navigate and lead in deep tech. Innovation at the edge of physics demands more than technical brilliance; it requires the ability to communicate complex ideas, recover from massive failures, and foster healthy, high-performing teams. Eneko shares his incredible journey from a humble upbringing in Bilbao, Spain, where his mother worked as a cleaner. Thanks to accessible, high-quality public education, he was able to follow his passion and eventually become the first Basque physicist at NASA.

Eneko’s path is a testament to the power of resilience. He opens up about the terrifying (and now hilarious) story of his very first PhD experiment, where a broken glass vial led to the accidental creation of a radioactive living cell culture—resulting in an eight-hour lockdown with his PI. He explains how he bounced back from that disaster, adopting a philosophy from an early mentor to "stand up when you fall" and to treat life's massive obstacles like tsunamis to be surfed. By eventually swapping the glass for metal, his experiment ultimately led to a publication in Nature Physics and a spot at Oxford University.

We also explore his approach to leadership, deeply influenced by a mentor at Stanford who taught him that a leader's true priorities are ensuring their team is growing and happy. Finally, Eneko illustrates that the best deep tech innovators are often polymaths. He walks us through his 15 years in science radio, writing a hit theater play called "Quantum Adventures" that explains quantum physics to kids using Schrödinger's cat, and his mind-blowing invention of "electro cooking," which uses electrical resistance to cook a kilo of meat in just eight seconds.

Links

• Delicioso Algoritmo by Eneko Axpe: https://www.amazon.com/Delicioso-algoritmo-Eneko-Axpe/dp/8408297678/

About this podcast

This podcast is hosted by Tai-Danae Bradley and features the stories of amazing people working in science and technology at SandboxAQ and beyond. All curious humans are invited to join!

Want to get in touch? Write us at [email protected]

For previous episodes, check out https://www.youtube.com/@sandboxaq

In this episode of the fAQ podcast, Tai-Danae explores the emotional and intellectual rigor required to solve impossible problems in Deep Tech with Tiffany Callahan, who was a Machine Learning Research Scientist at SandboxAQ before starting her current role at Manas AI as a Principal Machine Learning Engineer. Tiffany is a computational biologist with a fascinatingly unconventional background. From testing the melting point of Tupperware in her family's fireplace, to conducting behavioral experiments on her triplet siblings, her unquenchable curiosity has driven her since childhood.

Tiffany walks us through her journey of completing a 752-page dissertation at the University of Colorado Anschutz, inspired by her grandfather’s wisdom that “knowledge is the one thing that no one can take away from you”. We dive deep into her work at SandboxAQ, where she led a team building causal virtual cell models from first principles to understand gene expression dynamics.

Because Deep Tech demands that we operate in uncharted territory, Tiffany opens up about the immense pressure of the work. She shares the brilliant concept of “Rubber Duck Science” and explains why true Deep Tech leadership requires radical vulnerability. Tiffany recounts a recent moment where she cried in front of her team out of frustration, admitted she didn't know the answer, and watched as that raw honesty empowered her team to solve a two-week coding problem in just two hours. Finally, she shares her deeply personal ultimate dream: to use biology, AI, and digital patterns to proactively solve mental health crises before people even know they are struggling.

Links:

• Follow her on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/callahantiff
• Check out her AQtive Minds episode here: “From fMRI to AI: A Scientist's Journey to Building Virtual Cells | Tiffany Callahan's AQtive Mind” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9j6EHsBvfg

About this podcast

This podcast is hosted by Tai-Danae Bradley and features the stories of amazing people working in science and technology at SandboxAQ and beyond. All curious humans are invited to join!

Want to get in touch? Write us at [email protected]

For previous episodes, check out https://www.youtube.com/@sandboxaq

The fAQ Podcast is back from hiatus! In our first episode of season 3, Tai-Danae explores what it takes to lead and innovate at the bleeding edge of deep tech with SandboxAQ's Stefan Bogdanovic, Strategic Innovation Lead on the AQMed team. Moving from abstract scientific concepts to building real-world medical products requires a complete shift in mindset, and Stefan walks us through exactly how he navigated that transition.

Stefan’s journey is a masterclass in resilience, starting from his childhood in Serbia during the turbulent 1990s. Originally determined to be a pure theoretical physicist, he opens up about his early battles with imposter syndrome in a dry, highly mathematical educational system that lacked psychological safety. We dive into his evolution from an academic holding the unofficial title of "Chief Morale Officer" for his team at Harvard, to a deep tech leader navigating the messy reality of product development.

Stefan shares hard-hitting leadership lessons from SandboxAQ, including the pivotal moment his team’s three-year project on a magnetocardiography device failed its first clinical trial at UCSF after picking up interference from elevators and laptops. He explains why failing early is a necessary gift in deep tech, how startups often get product strategy backward by prioritizing tech over the application, and why technical leaders must be willing to strip away their professional ego and identity to truly solve a problem.

Learn more about what the AQMed is working on here: https://www.sandboxaq.com/solutions/aqmed

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• “From D&D to Quantum Discovery | Stefan Bogdanovic's AQtive Mind” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuWl0W-c2w8
• “From Diamonds to Heartbeats: Stefan Bogdanovic’s Journey” https://www.sandboxaq.com/post/from-diamonds-to-heartbeats-stefan-bogdanovics-journey

About this podcast

This podcast is hosted by Tai-Danae Bradley and features the stories of amazing people working in science and technology at SandboxAQ and beyond. All curious humans are invited to join!

Want to get in touch? Write us at [email protected]

For previous episodes, check out https://www.youtube.com/@sandboxaq

Welcome to season 2 finale of fAQ! For this season, Tai-Danae and Adam focused on a single topic: What is actually happening inside a quantum computer? By the end of this season, you'll have a better understanding of the "how" of quantum computing. So get ready to go beyond the theory and dig into what's actually going on these machines that harness the fundamental forces of the universe! In this sixth episode, we continue our exploration into DiVincenzo's fifth criterion for functional quantum computers: "Measurement of individual qubits". Specifically, we dig into what it means to "measure" something, in both the everyday context and in the quantum world. You might end up being surprised how similar those are and how not-strange measurement is in the quantum context...well at least some parts of those measurements! Oh, and we talk about how you, yes YOU, can work towards winning a Nobel Prize using the fAQ comment section ;-) Want to get in touch? Write us at [email protected] Host Bios: Tai-Danae Bradley is a research mathematician at SandboxAQ. She earned a PhD in mathematics from the CUNY Graduate Center and is creator of the mathematics blog, Math3ma, and a former cohost of PBS Infinite Series. Adam Green is the Head of Science Education at SandboxAQ. He earned a PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Rochester and was the Director of US Academic Content at Khan Academy before joining Sandbox. Resources mentioned on this episode: https://pennylane.ai/qml/demos/tutorial_trapped_ions https://pennylane.ai/qml/demos/tutorial_sc_qubits https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-does-the-quantum-world-cross-over/ Want to learn more about what SandboxAQ does? Check out our blog: https://www.sandboxaq.com/blog

Heads-up, you might want to check out the video version of fAQ this time, there are a lot of graphics that will help you through this topic!Welcome to season 2 of fAQ!

For this season, Tai-Danae and Adam will be focusing on a single topic: What is actually happening inside a quantum computer? By the end of this season, you'll have a better understanding of the "how" of quantum computing. So get ready to go beyond the theory and dig into what's actually going on these machines that harness the fundamental forces of the universe!

In this fifth episode, we continue our exploration into DiVincenzo's fourth criterion for functional quantum computers: "A universal set of quantum gates". Specifically, we look at two-qubit gates and really dig into how quantum entanglement works and how to create it among trapped ions. And along the way, you'll hear about what old-school Nintendo cheat codes and not-stealing M&Ms has to do with all of this!

Want to get in touch? Write us at [email protected]

Host Bios:

Tai-Danae Bradley is a research mathematician at SandboxAQ. She earned a PhD in mathematics from the CUNY Graduate Center and is creator of the mathematics blog, Math3ma, and a former cohost of PBS Infinite Series.

Adam Green is the Head of Science Education at SandboxAQ. He earned a PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Rochester and was the Director of US Academic Content at Khan Academy before joining Sandbox.

Resources mentioned on this episode:

Want to learn more about what SandboxAQ does? Check out our blog: https://www.sandboxaq.com/blog

Want an video version of this podcast? Check it out at: https://youtu.be/dntGyI8DtYI