About me

What I do

I’m currently a member of the 50th American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science and Technology Policy Fellowship (STPF) cohort, where I work associated with the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure. In this role I endeavor to foster “open domains” (i.e., science, data, source, & AI) and their synnergies in order to promote more efficient, accessible, and impactful science.

Although this framework has underwritten my journey for some time now, my route to this point has been somewhat circuitous.

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) are released open source and are available on GitHub. Although I try and update these products from time to time and respond to questions about their use and applications, my shift away from traditional academic work has made this difficult. That being said, I’m hopeful that my shift to agency and policy based work will lead to even broader impacts on science.

My work producing computational code and services has made salient the extreme importance of open-source code, open data, and accessible and integrated computer resources. Furthermore, as an involved member of graduate student and university governance at Indiana University, I recognized the substantial potential for impact when working with institutional stakeholders and influencing policy. As such, I am looking forward to working in the NSF’s Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure fostering resources for more robust and easily accessible data analysis and usage ecosystems.