Ryan Peterman

I think I was lucky enough not to think that I would change anything.

I think I was lucky enough, and many people are lucky in this field because the field is so accommodating to young people.

It's completely leveled.

There's no hierarchies.

People would go to conferences and meet.

I remember my first conference meeting Dick Karp, who was...

I got in the field and did all these NP-complete things.

I was a first year graduate student and somebody introduced me to him and he immediately asked me what I'm doing.

I said I proved that some problem was NP-complete and he was actually interested.

It amazed me.

I was lucky to have phenomenal mentors as an undergrad, as a graduate student.

I was lucky to have unbelievable collaborators over the years.

You learn from all this.

It's not a very informative advice to people to tell them to be lucky.

I think this environment exists.

One piece of advice I give everybody is that in the early stages is to work on things they enjoy the most.

So when you are discovering your talents as a researcher, one direction may be, you know, these are all problems, if you solve them, then you... But maybe that's not your problems.

Maybe it's not your affinity to them.

You have to experiment with the type of problems.

It's good to have a variety of...