Makrand Sinha is a Simons-Berkeley postdoctoral fellow at the Simons Institute at UC Berkeley. He received a PhD in 2018 from the University of Washington and subsequently completed an appointment as a postdoctoral researcher at CWI Amsterdam. His research interests lie in the foundations of quantum and classical computation and optimization, and specifically in understanding the relative power of quantum vs classical algorithms and communication protocols, understanding limitations of various approaches in optimization such as Linear or Semidefinite Programs, and designing algorithms for various optimization problems.