At the time, i needed academic affiliation, meaning be in college or more likely have a professor vouch for me. What i ended up doing was return to Stanford undergrad n take classes related to algorithms, show my algorithm portfolio in office hours, then get referred to other profs, one of them being Jeffrey Ullman, in 2019. N then after emails back n forth we met in person in the Gates building, it went from there.
Very happy to have met Professor Jeffrey Ullman.