Two Sigma Fellowships recognize doctorate students who are expanding frontiers in a STEM field such as statistics, applied mathematics, computer science, and physics. In our series, The Fellowship Forum, we catch up with past and present Two Sigma Fellows to highlight the fascinating research they’re performing in their respective fields.
Suproteem Sarkar is a Two Sigma Fellow and doctoral student within Harvard’s Economics department. We spoke with Suproteem about how the Two Sigma Fellowship has supported his doctorate journey and his recent work on economics, finance, machine learning, and cognitive science.
Suproteem Sarkar
Harvard University, Department of Economics
What drew you to apply to the PhD fellowship?
I became interested in the fellowship because it encourages research across several disciplines, and has a community of past winners who work on exciting research.
What is your area of research?
My research is in economics and finance, and additionally relates to topics in machine learning and cognitive science. Currently I am interested in how the ways that people think and communicate affect how markets function. I am also interested in how algorithms shape markets, and how economics can inform how we design algorithms.
What excites you about your field?
I enjoy doing research in these areas because I get to think about questions that I find interesting. In addition, I like to find connections between ideas and make arguments with data — both of which I get to do in my research.
How has the Two Sigma PhD Fellowship supported your doctorate journey?
The fellowship has encouraged me to work on more challenging projects. I’m very excited to see how things progress as I develop these new areas of research.
What advice would you share with others who are considering pursuing a doctorate degree?
A doctoral program can take many years to finish, and it’s important to have an idea of how life will look during those years. As a prospective doctoral student, I learned a lot from reaching out to students who were in similar programs. These conversations helped to make me confident that my current doctoral program would be a good fit for me.
What sparked your curiosity recently?
Recently I have been reading more of the cognitive science literature on mental representations. There are parallels between these ideas and ideas in computer science – for example the concept of a distributed representation – that I’ve enjoyed reading about. While my research does not sit directly in this literature, it’s been interesting to think about how some of these ideas may relate to my own work.
Visit Academic Partnerships to learn more about Two Sigma fellowships and other opportunities available to undergraduate, graduate students, and professors.
