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\date{\today}

% \address{Department of CSE\\
% University at Buffalo\\
% 226 Bell Hall\\
% Buffalo,  NY  14260--2000}

\signature{Dr. Kenneth W.\ Regan}

\begin{letter}{Postdoctoral Fellowship Committee\\
Computer Science Theory Lab\\
Stanford University\\

Re: applicant Michael wehar
}

\opening{
Dear Postdoctoral Fellowship Committee:
}

I am delighted to provide a reference for Mr.\ Michael Wehar.
I first met him in May 2013 when he visited me prior to beginning
graduate study with a TA fellowship plus Dean's supplement at Buffalo.

Michael is an incredible self-starter and without much input from me has
(co-)written three successful conference papers.  The singly-authored one
won the Best Student Paper Award of Track B at ICALP 2014.  We've started
our own joint project on time-space tradeoffs; it has been slowed on
my end by 2015 being a horrible year for chess cheating right through
two new cases cropping up late last month.  He makes community contacts with
no shyness; I've twice had the experience of meeting for the first time
someone who's worked with him (one being Dmitry Chistakov on Barbados) 
and now he's joined forces with Robert Lubarsky whom I knew 25+ years ago.
On his own initiative he befriended the theory people at RIT (Rochester
Institute of Technology, 70 miles east) including Edith Hemaspaandra
and arranged to teach a summer course (undergrad 300-level intro theory
from Sipser's text) there with good results.  He also codes---not
just technical command-line code but GUI and website creation.
He is highly active both on StackExchange and in our local graduate
community affairs.

He entered and graduated from CMU a year-plus young, and that was one
of a few personal factors influencing his coming to Buffalo.
Ordinarily I would wish him to stay through the end of his 4th year here;
counting that he did an MS during his 4th year at CMU that would be
a ``normal'' 5 years.
However, he certainly can finish his PhD by summer or late spring,
and a postdoc would give the same timeframe before applying for
tenure-track jobs.  

For the larger research picture I feel he has found an excellent vantage
point focusing on problems involving finite automata and other
formally constrained machines.  The contribution he's made so far to my
project on time-space tradeoffs for Turing machines sprang from
his results on NFAs.  It's a good foundation for a research career
in theory and has extra ``outs'' besides---for instance, 
acyclic context-free grammars with
singleton languages yield good compression schemes.  

He has been a great TA for my courses, especially relating to the students 
at both graduate and undergrad levels.  His office hours are
well frequented.  He is conscientious in grading perhaps even to
a fault---it took awhile to sink in how my grading scheme removes the
need to care about fine distinctions in giving partial credits.
He was highly efficient as a shared TA for mine and another
course this past term.  And he is simply a really nice and
unassuming person to work with.  

In sum I can give him my highest recommendation.  Though I would
miss him locally, an opportunity to
interact at Stanford would be perfect for him at this time.
I've witnessed above both the youthful energy and high maturity that 
augur well for success---and his having made three overseas trips
including presenting at the 2015 China Theory Week in Shanghai
says so all the more.
I will be happy to answer any further questions you may have.








\closing{Yours sincerely}

\end{letter}

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