Hi! I'm JJ. I go by apropos (among other names) on the Internet.

I'm a fourth-year student at the University of British Columbia, flag hunter for Maple Bacon, mathematics, linguistics, and type theory aficionado, total language nerd, and occasional ultimate frisbee player.

Outside of school, sports, and social life, I enjoy building and contributing to free-and-open-source projects. The majority of my work can either be found on GitHub or here on my website.

research

I am particularly interested in language and its relation to meaning.
This manifests itself in various different fashions in different fields.

In linguistics: I'm interested in the syntax-semantics interface: in more philosophical terms, how sense informs denotation, and how denotation informs sense. I am particularly interested in this with respect to types and their connection to intuitionistic logic via Curry-Howard.
In computer science: I care about language interoperability: the preservation of meaning across languages with differing types systems, operational semantics, and conventions. Alongside this, I have recently also developed an interest in effects-and-handlers systems: finding interest in their use as a unification of non-local control flow.
In mathematics: I have a particular interest in foundations and category theory: and how they inform what we mean by proof. This in turn has manifested an interest in theorem provers and proof mechanization.

I am actively looking for a research position on this topic, to start Sep. 2025. If you know a professor who is hiring students or interns for any of the above, please send me an email!