He is a founding member of the NYU Math and Data Group. Afonso holds a PhD in Applied Mathematics from Princeton University and, before joining NYU, was with the Department of Mathematics at MIT. His research interest lie in the intersection of Theoretical Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, and Optimization, and how these areas relate to Data Science. His work is motivated by applications in Robotics, Computer Vision, Biological Imaging, and Social Network Analysis, among others. He often uses tools from mathematical fields such as High Dimensional Probability, Random Matrix Theory, and Representation Theory. More recently, he has become interested in the interplay between statistical physics and computation.