Bio

As far as labels go, Data Scientist is the one that fits best, although my day-to-day work spans quite a bit: building LLM apps for clinical NLP, designing databases and ETL pipelines, managing DevOps infrastructure, and occasionally doing something that actually looks like machine learning — all in the context of medical research at UT Southwestern.

I like working at the intersection of messy real-world data, scientific questions, and systems that actually have to run in production. This site is a place where I collect projects, experiments, and ideas that sit in that overlap.

When I started college, I was the prototypical premed — mostly because "being a doctor sounds cool." Then I remembered that in fifth grade I had to leave class during a lesson on the circulatory system because I nearly passed out. Medicine might not have been my calling, but science definitely was.

I majored in chemistry, which I loved, but in my final semester I took an informatics course and discovered something magical: results at the click of a button instead of a five-hour organic synthesis. The joy of being able to rapidly iterate with software led me to my first role at UTSW, in the radiation oncology department as a "clinical data specialist" — my first experience with a job title not matching what I actually did. In practice, I was mostly doing bioinformatics, analyzing RNA-seq and microbiome data.

After completing my Master's degree in Data Science, I moved to my current role. Ironically, despite being in the bioinformatics department, I now do considerably less bioinformatics and considerably more systems, infrastructure, and applied AI.

What I've realized over the years is that my north star is understanding — or occasionally uncovering — how the hotdog is made. I'm happiest when I can peel back abstractions, trace systems to their roots, and figure out what's really going on under the hood, whether that's a statistical method, a production pipeline, or a messy real-world dataset.

Quick Facts

Education

• Master of Science in Data Science
• Bachelor of Science in Chemistry
• Both from the University of Texas at Austin

Experience

• Data Scientist, Bioinformatics — Sep 2023 – Present
• Clinical Data Specialist, Radiation Oncology — Feb 2020 – Aug 2023
• Both at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

Public Service

• Designed and maintain the website for a regional food bank, Feeding Families of Alabama (WordPress)

My Cat Bagel

• See photos of Bagel