I am an engineer by training working at the interface between ethics, "social" science, and "natural" science, primarily within the realm of climate change research. This breadth allows me to work in the all-too-often-neglected gaps between traditional academic disciplines and to help translate research findings from one community to another. I am proudly part of a trend within academia towards "transdisciplinary" research. This approach to research is highly pragmatic: given the limitations of my capabilities, I will study whatever topics seem most important using whatever methods seem most helpful. I am quite fortunate to be in both a field (geography) and a university (Penn State) which are very supportive of this approach to research.
My current research has several major themes:
* astrobiology, the study of life in the universe.
* artificial general intelligence, AI that succeeds in a broad range of problems, like the human mind.
* discounting, the comparison of value across time. This research includes my Ph.D. dissertation.
My Masters research was with the Northeastern-based Center for Subsurface Sensing and Imaging Systems (CenSSIS). My masters thesis, with Carey Rappaport, "User and Developer Interface Improvements to a Finite Difference Time Domain Code", resulted in the NUFDTD electromagnetics software package.
I also completed summer internships at
* Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, working in computational acoustic tomography with Sean Lehman
* The University of Rochester Physics Department, working in computational quantum optics with Joseph Eberly
* Andrew's Leap, a Carnegie Mellon University Computer Science Department summer program for Pittsburgh-area high school students. My final project there (with several others) involved designing a robot system that would drop water balloons on innocent pedestrians as they walked by. Matthew Mason advised this project.
Created 15 Jun 2007 * Updated 8 Mar 2010