Hi All!

My name is Chase Carstensen, and I am currently a master’s student studying Artificial Intelligence at Boston University. I’m passionate about education, the climate, and responsible artificial intelligence and machine learning research.

My research focuses on computational combinatorics, graph theory, and the theory of machine learning and reinforcement learning, with a particular interest in using ML and RL to assist with mathematical discovery and combinatorial optimization. My goal is to pursue a Ph.D. in Computer Science / Mathematics.

In my free time, I enjoy listening to/playing music, playing Magic: The Gathering, and being outdoors.

News

• July 2026: I committed to Boston University’s Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence program.
• May 2026: I graduated from WPI with High Distinction and a dual major in Computer Science and Mathematics. I was given the Meritorious Senior Award from the WPI Mathematics Department for outstanding academic performance.
• August 2025-May 2026: I completed my Major Qualifying Project with Prof. Daniel Reichman and Prof. Gábor Sárközy. We used ML/AI to find long induced paths in the hypercube. I was awarded an Honorable Mention to the Provost’s Award for Best MQP in Computer Science.
• August 2025-January 2026: I worked with Prof. Walter Gerych’s lab on minimally invasive and efficient debiasing methods for large pre-trained models.
• May-August 2025: I participated in the University of Colorado Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Program with Prof. Jugal Kalita titled “Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing” where we evaluated an LLM’s ability to find counterexamples to claims in graph theory.
• October-December 2024: I spent 8 weeks in Prague, Czechia, completing my Interactive Qualifying Project. We used LLMs to label historical documents in the Memory of Nations database.

Leadership & Honors

• Best MQP in Computer Science (Honorable Mention): Provost’s Award for research on deep reinforcement learning for snake-in-the-box constructions (May 2026).
• Meritorious Senior Award: Awarded by the WPI Mathematical Sciences Department for outstanding academic performance (May 2026).
• President, Pi Mu Epsilon: Revitalized WPI’s mathematics honor society chapter and founded the annual WPI Undergraduate Mathematics Symposium (2024–2026).
• Events Coordinator, Upsilon Pi Epsilon: Co-organized the CS honor society career fair and member initiatives (2025–2026).