Welcome

Thank you for browsing my personal website. I am a Principal Researcher at American Institutes for Research (AIR) based in San Francisco, CA. I am a methodologist with a passion for approachable and applicable quantitative methodologies. I'm a social science researcher and data scientist by training, and more recently I've expanded my skillset as a user experience researcher and application developer. 

My passion is to improve the science and methods of research synthesis broadly. The field of research synthesis has come a long way in the last 40-ish years since a few academics galvanized it. To think we have it all figured out is simply shortsighted: now more than ever (see: AI) we have a lot more to streamline and get right. 

This passion for research synthesis and knowledge use improvements led me to my latest endeavor, as Founder and Chief Architect of the software platform MetaReviewer. Our team built a completely free platform for research synthesists who want a simple way to capture complex studies. Since 2022, we've developed functionality to assist with creating codebooks from templates, screening and coding studies, reconciling two user records, estimating effect sizes, and managing collaborative projects. And that's just the start. My vision for MetaReviewer is an end-to-end platform for research synthesis that embeds best practices from experience conducting research syntheses. 

The next set of best practices will undoubtably come from automation. Methodologists and researchers will be tasked with evaluating not only the latest breakthrough in AI. While at the same time, we will need to evaluate tools and applications that build on the latest AI models. It will be through a careful and thoughtful incorporation of the latest with the understood that will democratize and revolutionize research synthesis for everyone. I intend to help shape and shepherd this new era. 

I'll do so by building off my previous work. In the past, I helped develop products, tool, and online services for the U.S. Department of Education's What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) as Project Director and co-Principal Investigator (PI) of the Statistics, Website, and Training (SWAT) contract. I also lead and have led numerous systematic reviews and meta-analyses funded by the U.S. Department of Justice's National Institute of Justice, the National Science Foundation, and AIR's Opportunity Fund. Some examples include examining the longitudinal relations between school violence and mental health and school performance, the effectiveness of programming to reduce cyberbullying, and the effects of college aid funding on student success. I'm also fortunate to serve as Co-PI of two awards to train future meta-analysts: the meta-analysis training institute and the modern meta-analysis research institute. I've also worked to reduce publication bias, increase data sharing, and further the mission of research transparency - all in the spirit of improving the conduct of meta-analysis.  

And of course, in the past, I've served several methodologist roles. I helped to lead the design and analysis of a large-scale cluster-randomized trial impact evaluation. I've consulted on research projects that use longitudinal observational data and these have lead to a few interesting analyses. If you look closely at my CV, you will see I do some applied measurement analyses like exploratory or confirmatory factor analysis.

More recently I've set my sights on upskilling my previous training. I'm pretty consistently looking for ways to improve on my skillset as a researcher, whether through formal training (e.g., an MIT certificate in designing AI products) or informal training (e.g., a Udemy course in AI prompt engineering). I also do a lot of on-the-job learning through application of our funding to interesting methodological projects. Throughout 2024, for example, I led a team of 5 researchers to build new automation models for conducting various parts of the synthesis process. I learned numerous valuable *new* skills along the way. 

As for formal schooling, I attended Loyola University Chicago from 2008 - 2013, receiving my Ph.D.; Next I participated in an U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences (IES) Postdoctoral Fellowship at Vanderbilt University until 2015. Following the Postdoctoral Fellowship, I worked at Development Services Group, Inc. as a Senior Research Scientist. In the fall of 2017 I joined AIR. 

Feel free to contact me with questions, comments, or random thoughts.