Matt Kafker is an active university student interested in physics, math, computer science, and literature. Dedicated to promoting the welfare of others, Matt Kafker has volunteered with organizations including the Pine Street Inn homeless shelter, Open Door Food Pantry, and Greater Boston Food Bank. Being an effective volunteer requires a specific set of skills. The following are five strengths that a volunteer should have:1. Awareness. A helpful volunteer identifies people’s needs and finds ways to meet them by using the knowledge they have gained from their life experience and training.2. Reliability. Volunteering requires a commitment to completing volunteer activities on a regular schedule.3. Compassion. Volunteers are empathic to the situations that impact those that they serve.4. Self-confidence. Being able to receive constructive criticism helps a volunteer learn how to provide better service while developing his or her skills. 5. Enthusiasm. Having a positive attitude and passion for the work being done is vital to making a successful contribution.
A university student with a focus on physics, computer science, and math, Matt Kafker is an avid reader who enjoys works of scientific inquiry. One of Matt Kafker’s favorite science writers is Richard Dawkins, who was interviewed by Scientific American in August 2017. One topic that Dawkins addressed was the “reproducibility crisis,” which has created serious concerns about the reliability of scientific research, particularly in the medical field. At the root of this is a tendency for the results of studies to be summed up in neat ways that are designed to gain wide dissemination in the media but don’t stand up to attempts at replication by other scientists.In addition, a “file drawer effect” exists, whereby those papers that do not disprove the null hypothesis, or accepted status quo, do not achieve publication, as they are considered too boring. As Dawkins views it, this can lead to the spread of falsehoods. This is because enough studies on a subject will eventually generate some outliers that “yield statistical significance,” even in cases where the null hypothesis is true. One way of resolving the file drawer effect proposed by Dawkins is for scientists to publish on the Internet their intention to undertake experiments beforehand. The results are then shared with the scientific community, regardless of whether the findings are positive or negative.
After graduating with high honors from Middlesex School and earning awards such as the Sibyl F. Cohane Prize, Matt Kafker began his university education majoring in physics. Alongside keeping up with his studies, Matt Kafker enjoys traveling around the world, internationally and to domestic sites of interest such as Alaska.As you prepare for an Alaskan adventure, you face an extensive range of choices to view the state’s spectacular natural scenery. Two places in particular to consider visiting are Denali National Park & Preserve and Kenai Fjords National Park.Denali National Park holds the tallest peak in the United States known as Denali Mountain (also called Mount McKinley). With 6 million acres encompassing everything from river valleys to alpine ranges, the park boasts more than 650 flowering plant species to view during the summer, 169 bird species, and 39 mammal species.Kenai Fjords National Park offers breathtaking views of glaciers, fjords, and icefields across the Kenai Peninsula. Located south of Anchorage and relatively easy to reach, this park also affords visitors an opportunity to participate in dog sled races.
A university student, Matt Kafker serves as an advocate for the homeless and the hungry by volunteering at the Pine Street Inn homeless shelter. In addition to his community work, Matt Kafker was awarded the Rene N. Bourquin French Prize while a student at Middlesex School, and currently maintains a GitHub page at https://github.com/mmkafker.A web-based development platform, GitHub enables developers to collaboratively develop code, manage projects, and build software. The community, which currently includes more than 27 million individuals, benefits from a robust set of tools in areas like project management and code review.Code review tools on GitHub are designed to improve overall code quality while also fitting into a team’s current workflow. Beginning with what’s known as a pull request, teams can review and improve code through a process that incorporates comments, changes, and comparisons. Moreover, several review tools are available to further refine the review process. These include:- Codecov - a tool that allows coverage reports to be grouped and archived- Codacy - an automated review tool designed to improve and speed up code review - Coveralls - a tool that ensures code is covered and provides coverage trend analysis- CodeFactor - a GitHub automated code review tool
A university student majoring in physics, Matt Kafker also pursues a variety of academic interests in his spare time. Driven to learn French and Spanish, Matt Kafker’s fascination with foreign languages and linguistics, which can have several cognitive benefits and benefit one’s professional and personal life, is evident.Knowing more than one language is not only a potentially indispensable skill in an ever-shrinking world, but also beneficial to the brain’s chemistry. In recent years, studies have shown that learning another language can actually fend off certain diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. It also develops additional grey matter, which can improve the ability to multitask and increase attention span.Moreover, bilingualism can open new creative pathways in the mind and make a person more apt to relate to and understand foreign cultures. Those who speak different languages can deal more readily with environmental changes and are more able to immerse themselves during international travel. Research from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has shown that bilingual people will emphasize specific character traits, depending on the language being spoken.
A graduate of Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts, Matt Kafker now attends university in pursuit of a postsecondary degree. In his free time, Matt Kafker enjoys a variety of activities, including reading. He lists David Foster Wallace among his favorite authors. Born in 1962 in Ithaca, New York, David Foster Wallace was a prodigious novelist and essayist whose often dense writing is filled with a mix of dark humor, ironic wit, sadness, experimental language, and digressions in the form of footnotes. His best-known work is Infinite Jest, a massive novel comprising nearly 1,100 pages that are annotated with footnotes throughout. The publication of Infinite Jest in 1996 established Wallace in the literary world and attracted a devoted following of readers. The novel also caught the attention of many critics and earned Wallace a spot on a number of “best of” lists across the country. Although fans and critics anxiously awaited Wallace’s next novel, he never published another one in his lifetime. His writing following Infinite Jest was mostly in the form of short fiction and nonfiction pieces, published in collections such as A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Over the course of his career, Wallace received several awards and accolades, including the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant and three O. Henry Awards. After battling depression his entire adult life, Wallace committed suicide in 2008. The novel he had been working on at the time of his death, The Pale King, was published posthumously in 2011.
Alongside his academic activities, university student Matt Kafker pursues various hobbies and interests, including reading and traveling. Matt Kafker also enjoys listening to the music of a number of bands, including Bon Iver, Radiohead, and Car Seat Headrest.Car Seat Headrest was formed in Leesburg, Virginia, by guitarist Will Toledo, who began recording songs in his family’s car as a teenager. Toledo’s brand of angsty guitar-based rock carries on the tradition of indie heroes like Stephen Malkmus and Robert Pollard. Prior to the release of Car Seat Headrest’s first label-produced album in 2015, Toledo had already self-produced and released 11 albums on the music platform Bandcamp. Put out by Matador Records, his 2015 debut studio album, Teens of Style, features a handpicked selection of songs from Toledo’s Bandcamp catalogue. In 2016, Matador released Car Seat Headrest’s sophomore studio album, Teens of Denial. Featuring Toledo backed by an actual band, the album includes fan-favorite tracks such as “Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales,” “Fill in the Blank,” and “The Ballad of the Costa Concordia.” Since releasing Teens of Denial, the band’s output has included the singles “War Is Coming (If You Want It)” and “Beach Life in Death,” which came out in December 2017.
