Experience

Career Journey

From postdoctoral research to associate professorship—a decade of translating data into impact.

Sep 2024 – Present

University of Oregon

Accomplishments include:
Built Power BI dashboard tracking 70+ doctoral students' milestone progress; used by 30 faculty to identify at-risk students, reducing time-to-degree and informing program policy decisions.
Led program redesign through stakeholder research: conducted interviews with faculty and students to identify pain points in a key milestone, synthesized feedback into proposals, and secured unanimous faculty vote—reducing completion time and advisor burden.
Applied NLP and social network analysis to 700,000+ online community posts to map individual differences in the Type 1 diabetes community; findings informed healthcare communication strategies for patient advocacy organizations.
Mentored 13 early-career researchers (5 graduate, 8 undergraduate) through publication and career transitions; graduates placed in data science roles, graduate programs, and industry research positions.
Designed and delivered graduate-level statistics curriculum using open-source tools (R, jamovi); received Tykeson Teaching Award (2025) for making complex data accessible through clear storytelling.
Managed $250K annual research budget across multiple concurrent projects; secured $1.5M+ in competitive NIH and foundation funding as PI.

Apr 2020 – Present

Rapid Assessment of Pandemic Impact (Early Development)

Accomplishments include:
Designed and deployed 50+ waves of nationally representative surveys tracking 3,300+ families during COVID-19, integrating behavioral and attitudinal data to uncover unmet needs; outputs used by Senate Finance Committee staff to inform Child Tax Credit expansion.
Built automated NLP pipeline (tidytext, stm) to analyze 6,500+ open-ended responses, identifying emerging pain points in real time; findings informed survey iteration and federal policy recommendations.
Developed predictive models identifying families at highest risk for material hardship, integrating attitudinal and behavioral data for targeted interventions.
Created interactive R Markdown dashboards visualizing trends by demographic segments (e.g., material hardship by poverty status over time); used by policymakers and RAPID team to prioritize research questions.
Collaborated with policymakers, non-profits, and technical teams to translate complex survey data into product-style briefs; insights reached 50,000+ households through federal support programs.

Jan 2019 – Sep 2024

University of Oregon

Accomplishments include:
Developed and executed comprehensive educational strategies, generating $400,000+ in annual content.
Established guidelines for open-access data usage, benefiting over 250 research projects.
Delivered engaging presentations on psychological concepts, enhancing public understanding of psychological science.

Jul 2017 – Dec 2018

Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine

Accomplishments include:
Coordinated analysis across 15 longitudinal datasets (49,000+ participants) to identify patterns in health behavior; led team of analysts across multiple international institutions.
Built automated R pipelines for reproducible meta-analysis: analysts ran standardized scripts, outputs fed directly into aggregation and visualization. Increased research output 4x (from 3 coordinated analyses pre-pipeline to 12+ post-implementation).

Education

Academic Background

2012 – 2017

Washington University in St. Louis

Thesis on Building a theory of adaptive neuroticism. Supervised by Prof Joshua Jackson.

2008 – 2012

Northwestern University

Expertise

Causal Inference

SQL

Cooking

Parenting

Traveling

Recognition

2025

University of Oregon

Highest teaching honor at the University; awarded to one faculty member in Natural Sciences each year.