I am a PhD candidate in the Cornell Brooks School of Public Policy, where I do research in economics and demography using computational methods. I have also interned as a Machine Learning Engineer at Graphika Technologies, and as a Research Scientist at Spotify. I am currently seeking roles in the private sector. I hold an MSc in Inequalities and Social Science from the London School of Economics and a BA in Psychology from the University of Winnipeg.
Timeline
Fall 2023
- Continuing on my dissertation work
- Began actively seeking private sector roles to start in 2024. Open to discussing any and all opportunities!
Spring and Summer 2023
- I spent the spring and summer working on my dissertation projects and doing research into different options for post-PhD careers.
- My first-authored paper Comparing Methods for Estimating Demographics in Racially Polarized Voting Analyses was published in the Journal Sociological Methods and Research
- My solo-authored paper How should we proxy for race/ethnicity? Comparing Bayesian improved surname geocoding to machine learning methods was conditionally accepted at the journal Political Science Research Methods
Fall 2022
- I interned on Spotify’s Content Platform Research team. I worked on fitting graph neural networks (GNNs) to music industry knowledge graphs (with PyTorch) to create embeddings and do link prediction. I met many wonderful, intelligent people, and had a great time learning about the inner workings of a really cool industry.
- I passed my PhD A-exam and moved to PhD candidacy!
- My co-authored paper with Arthur Acolin and Matt Hall, Small-area estimates from consumer trace data was published in the journal Demographic Research.
- I presented my paper with Vlad Barash, Chief Scientist at Graphika Technologies, on Using Knowledge Graphs to Detect Partisanship in Online Political Discourse
Summer 2022
- I worked on mortality prediction and survival modelling at MPIDR in Rostock (link to program).
- Paper on knowledge graph representations of online political discourse accepted to the The 11th International Conference on Complex Networks and their Applications! (link to conference)
- Received a revise-and-resubmit for a co-authored applied demography paper!
Winter and Spring 2022
06/2021 - 12/2021: Summer and fall third year
- Worked as a Machine Learning Engineer at Graphika, building NLP classification models and methods for cross-platform clustering of social media data.
- RA for Dr. Matthew Hall on statistical models for the use of consumer data to measure population levels and migration flows.
- Wrote my second year paper, using machine learning to improve race-ethnicity imputation.
01/2021 - 05/2021: Spring of second year
- Awarded SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, which will fund the next three years of my PhD! Thanks, Canada!
- Presented a poster entitled “Small Area Population Estimates from Consumer Data” (joint with Arthur Acolin and Matthew Hall) at the PAA 2021 annual conference
- Also presented the above at the APPAM 2021 Student Seminar Series
- Submitted the first paper of my PhD, collaborative work with my DSSG colleagues on measuring racially polarized voting and the racial composition of the voting population.
- TA’d Big Data for Policy Analysis
09/2020 - 12/2020: Fall of second year
- Assembled my committee: Professors Doug Miller (Chair), Michael Macy, and Matthew Hall
- TA’d Introduction to Statistics for PAM Majors
- Presented ongoing research with my DSSG colleagues at PRIEC
06/2020 - 08/2020: Data Science for Social Good
- Developed an R package to quantify vote dilution in US elections
- Met many inspiring people
- Learned a lot. Some highlights:
- The “human-centered design” approach to data science
- How to collaborate on a coding project with a team spread across North America
- The intricacies of voting rights litigation and empirical research on voting
- Applied Bayesian statistics and spatial analysis in R
09/2019 - 05/2020: First year at Cornell
- Took courses in economics, statistics, computer science, sociology, and demography
- Started contributing to some ongoing research projects
- Became an affiliate of the Cornell Population Center (CPC)
- Moved back to Canada when the pandemic forced classes online in March
06/2019 - 08/2019: Free summer
- Visited friends in Berlin, road-tripped through Italy
- Got engaged!
- Traveled with my fiancee through South America:
- Fancy hotel in Cartegena
- Snorkeling on the Galapagos Islands
- Five day hike to Machu Picchu
- Drove through the Bolivian Salt Flats
09/2017 - 05/2019: Multi Health Systems
- Did data science and product development research on a small “intrepreneurial” team called the Innovation Hub
- Moved to product management:
- Developed a business plan for a workplace mental health assessment product
- Led a small team to help clients connect to the product’s API
09/2016 - 08/2017: London School of Economics
- Took courses in sociology, political science, demography, and causal inference
- Met some amazing people from all over Europe and the rest of the world
- Took weekend trips to Croatia, Scotland, Barcelona
- First exposure to R, and to programming (addicted ever since)
- Presented at the European Association of Social Psychology Conference in Granada, Spain
09/2012 - 09/2016: University of Winnipeg
- Studied political psychology in an undergraduate research lab
- Wrote a book chapter and a text analysis paper