For Work: I am a PhD student in Watershed Science at Utah State University, and working as a team member of the iUTAH project to help gain a deeper understanding of how water is used within the state of Utah (http://iutahepscor.org).

For Science: Prior to my PhD research, my education was in ecology, conservation biology, and zoology with a fair dose of botany as well. I am happy to discuss entomology, behavioral ecology, biodiversity, evolution, and well... science.

Data Science (or Why I have a profile in Stack Overflow): While looking at how to process large data sets for both quality control and to discover patterns in the observed data, I found out that apparently I should do some programming. Many of the tasks that I was doing through excel or through more manual manipulations of the data are the same kinds of things that I could do using R and/or python. Many of the ways I thought and played with data just for fun are part of the algorithmic thinking that can be central to the kinds of programming I'm trying to learn.

For Fun: Playing with my kids and our dog fill up the non-working hours of my day. Play time on my own or with my kids includes: astronomy, biking, reading, singing, swimming, running, and playing soccer.