About me

What I do

I’m currently the newest member of Ileana Hancu’s Science and Engineering Technical Advisor (SETA) team at ARPA-H in the Health Science Futures (HSF) division. In this role I provide expertise and analysis on topics like (open) software, data science, cyberinfrastructure, hardware, AI/ML, and neuroscience.

How I got here

In my first pass through college I majored in philosophy and psychology, with a minor in cognitive science, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Building upon this, I next pursued graduate study in philosophy of mind at the University of Cincinnati where I focused on the concept of mental representation insofar as it relates to AI, consciousness, and related contexts (e.g., explanations, mechanisms, metaphysics, etc.). Eventually though, I sought a more empirical route for studying the mind and pursued another baccalaureate degree in (neuro)biology, with minors in math and genetics, at North Carolina State University.

I next undertook doctoral study in neuroscience and psychology at Indiana University which I completed in 2021. This was followed by a one-year postdoctoral position at the University of Minnesota. My research has focused on topics related to the organization of the brain’s white matter, and the development of computational services and code for the digital segmentation of white matter. These products (coded in MATLAB and Python) were released open source and are still available on GitHub–out of date, though they may be.

My work producing code and associated services highlighted the extreme importance of open-source code, open data, and accessible and integrated computer resources. As such, I sought to achieve a broader impact by moving towards the world of science policy and joined the 2022-2024 cohort of the AAAS STPF. Through the fellowship I was placed in the NSF Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure and worked on various initiatives promoting open source, data, and science, including the Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE) program. Since then, I have moved on to work with the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) where I serve as a Science and Engineering Technical Advisor (SETA).