Currently, I work at IBM as a Software Engineer on the Watson Project to improve the relevancy of search results through machine learning. I also make use of my data analysis background to improve our development process by examining pages, bugs, and git data. Occasionally, I also adjunct for the Computer Science Department at the University of Pittsburgh, teaching programming, data structures, algorithms, and simulations.

Earlier in life, I was a grad student pursuing a PhD in Computer Science, with focuses on machine learning, natural language processing, user modeling and adaptation, and information visualization. My dissertation, titled “Adapting the Scheduling of Illustrations and Graphs to Learners in Conceptual Physics Tutoring”, modified a natural language-based computer tutor to include illustrations and graphs. I researched:

• whether illustrations or graphs helped learning: they did!
• whether there were learners or concepts that benefitted from one representation over another: there were!
• predicting which representation would lead to greater learning, then showing that it worked: it did!

In my spare time, I enjoy:

• cooking very spicy food for myself, desserts and appetizers for others, and experimental food for anyone willing to try it
• nature and gardening
• using technology to make gifts for people, e.g. a disco calculator for a friend’s daughter (and parent torture device) and using data analysis to help improve blood sugar control (and peace of mind) for my type 1 diabetic wife