Hi there! 👋 I'm Matt DeVerna.
At the moment (summer of '24), I am an Informatics PhD candidate in the complex networks and systems track at Indiana University. Check out my website www.matthewdeverna.com for the latest information about what I am doing in the world, as I do not update this very often.
- Twitter/X: @mdeverna2
- Threads: @matthewdeverna
- Google Scholar
I spent 2016 backpacking and visited over 20 countries. I began by spending a handful of months in South East Asia (Thailand ➡️ Laos ➡️ Cambodia). After working for a couple of months as a bartender on Koh Rong Island (Cambodia), I volunteered on a horse farm in Ripoll, Spain (Catalonia) for about a month. There, I helped with the general upkeep of the farm and property: pouring cement to build a horse stable, restoring a swimming pool, and so on. After that, I traveled through Spain for another couple of months. I surfed the couches of friends I made along the way in Barcelona and, later, randomly ran into a friend I had made months earlier in Chang Mai, Thailand in the lobby of a Madrid hostel. Given the serendipitous nature of the encounter, we decided to travel together. We worked north from Madrid through various Spanish towns to Pamplona where, while running with the bulls in the (in)famous festival, I lost my shoes and almost got gored. 🏃♂️ Next, I met an old friend from America in England. We bought a crappy car (bright red VW Polo 🚗!) and attempted to drive to Mongolia. Ultimately, our car died in a desert in Kazakhstan, but we did successfully cross the Pamir Highway, starting in Dushanbee, Uzbekistan, and finishing in Osh, Kyrgyzstan.