ESP Biography



CONNOR DUFFY, MIT junior




Major: Course 6-7

College/Employer: MIT

Year of Graduation: 2017

Picture of Connor Duffy

Brief Biographical Sketch:

Connor Duffy is an MIT junior hailing from Lino Lakes, Minnesota. Besides investigating the transcriptional regulation network of red blood cell development under Harvey Lodish at the Whitehead Institute, he tickles the ivories in a flute/cello/piano trio with the MIT Chamber Music Society, argues radical cases in American parliamentary style with the MIT Debate Team, directs an annual Science Olympiad competition at MIT for over 1,000 high school students, and occasionally sleeps. He is majoring in Course 6-7, Computer Science and Molecular Biology, and loves to travel, follow the markets, and meet new people every day.



Past Classes

  (Clicking a class title will bring you to the course's section of the corresponding course catalog)

C10076: Bitcoin: The Basics in Splash 2015 (Nov. 21 - 22, 2015)
Blockchain. Coinbase. Mining. You've heard all the bitcoin buzzwords -- but what do they actually mean? In this class, we'll survey the tumultuous history and bright potential of the first-ever cryptocurrency, bitcoin; dive into the technical underpinnings of bitcoin and its companion public ledger, the blockchain; and discuss how you -- yes, you -- can participate in this cashless and bankless revolution taking the worlds of finance and distributed computing by storm.


M9052: The Ways of Bayes: Applying Probability Theory in Everyday Life in Splash 2014 (Nov. 22 - 23, 2014)
Having a worse quality of living. Suffering financial harm. Being manipulated and robbed of personal autonomy. Having your society collapse. Ending up falsely accused or imprisoned. Ending up dead. What do all of these things have in common? They are the potential costs, according to one source, of a poor comprehension of Bayes' Theorem. In this class, we'll teach an intuitive understanding of Bayes' Theorem and rational decision-making through real-world examples, and show how applying Bayes' Theorem in social situations can allay awkwardness, generate key inferences, and disrupt social hierarchies, allowing, in many cases, the question-asker to be empowered as the effective decision-maker.


S8298: Nature's Fundamental Forces: Electromagnetism and Gravity in Spark 2014 (Mar. 15 - 16, 2014)
What is electricity? How do batteries work? Heck, what is "energy" in the first place? How can a tiny magnet defeat the gravitational pull of the entire earth? And why don't the protons in an atom's nucleus repel each other like positive charges are supposed to? Come hear these questions -- and more -- answered in a lively crash-course on the fundamental forces of the universe. Best of all, you will get to build (and bring home!) your very own electromagnetic motor. I think we can all agree that this is an incredibly "attractive" class to attend.