I'm a PhD candidate in political science with a specialization in computational social science at the University of California, San Diego pursuing a career in data science. I previously studied at the University at Buffalo where I received a BS in computational physics and a BA in political science with a concentration in American politics. During my time at UB I also served as a founding board member and vice president of Science Demands Action, a non-profit dedicated to using science for social good.
My academic research uses computational methods like natural language processing to study how responsive legislators are to their constituents by scraping and analyzing large datasets of social media and press release data. I also conduct research on polarization and local government with survey and observational survey data.
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Outside of my research I am interested in developing and learning new data science methods . I created speccurvieR, an R package for fast, pretty, and easy specification curve analysis (available via CRAN). I also built a dashboard to analyze track and streaming data related to one of my favorite musicians, check out SufjanViz here.
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Currently, I am working on building a web scraper and dashboard to systematically collect and analyze press releases issued by members of the House of Representatives.
