Innovator and Creator
Carnegie Mellon professor Po-Shen Loh is on a mission to help humanity thrive in the age of AI. He crosses over between disciplines from math to technology to performing arts, while perpetually on tour, speaking to and learning from audiences around the globe. He uses these experiences to innovate win-win (highly scalable) ecosystems to solve real world problems, ranging from reinventing learning to rethinking the paradigm for pandemic control.
Revolutionizing Problem Solving Education
Prof. Loh created a new and deeply human ecosystem for teaching the core skill of how to solve previously-unfamiliar problems — essential in the age of AI. It is powered by a novel fusion of math stars and professional actors, teaching in a format that is as engaging as live-video streaming platforms like Twitch and Instagram Live. Simultaneously, it develops a generation of kind and clever future leaders, to guide our world into a more thoughtful place.
Educator and Coach
Prof. Loh has been a math professor at Carnegie Mellon University since 2010, and served a decade-long term as the National Coach of the winning USA International Mathematical Olympiad team from 2013–2023. Through travel, collaboration, and intellectual curiosity, he uncovers math in unexpected places in our everyday lives. His unconventional attitude informs his holistic approach to education and drives him to teach students of all levels, backgrounds, and ages.
Academic and Researcher
Prof. Loh's academic career focuses on original discovery in the areas of combinatorics, probability theory, and computer science. He has published numerous papers in academic journals and was recognized by the 2019 United States Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.
Pandemic Control
Prof. Loh pioneered the network radar paradigm for pandemic control, which is fundamentally different from the strategies used by all other smartphone pandemic apps. The NOVID app was the first to empower the app user to directly avoid infection themselves. In contrast, all other apps primarily aimed to prevent the app user from infecting other people after the app user was already suspected of infection. This is a new approach for disease control which is driven by self-interest. This invention ended up making national press in several countries.
Daily Challenge
Before developing his live video teaching platform, Prof. Loh created an original curriculum with a fresh approach to teaching advanced creative mathematical thinking to middle school students through carefully produced videos. The Daily Challenge is a fun and systematic tour of middle school competition math.
Moderate Zoom Chat
While teaching online, Prof. Loh observed that big Zoom meetings (especially classrooms) were disengaged. He designed and developed a free system for anyone to turn their online lectures into lively interactions. The key was to create the first easy-to-use system that lets you moderate Zoom chat, and delete messages.
Speaking Tour
In Summer 2021, Prof. Loh conducted the largest outdoor solo math tour in history, visiting 40 cities over 7 weeks, holding free events in public parks. He is continuing this tradition, and may soon be speaking in a city near you.