I am the developer of the Grass app, a jam companion for bluegrass musicians. As part of that work I am also a student and performer of bluegrass guitar. You can join us every Wednesday night at Mr. Smalls Cafe in Millvale, PA. I also periodically attend music retreats hosted by progressive bluegrass musicians like Bryan Sutton and Chris Eldridge.
I am the AI Advisor for GSV Ventures, a VC fund focused on education. As part of that work I meet with founders and provide early support in machine learning, AI, and go-to-market strategy as well as providing due diligence to the fund. I occasionally serve as an advisor and angel investor in portfolio companies.
I received my Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science, at the Language Technologies Institute, advised by Carolyn Rosé (2009-2013) and Alan W Black (2018-2020). While in academia I also taught at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Social Policy and Practice.
I have worked as an advisor to philanthropies like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative on advanced R&D projects focused on machine learning and education. I was also a grantee of the Gates Foundation as part work to innovate in writing education for K-12 classrooms.
From 2014-2018 I was the Vice President of New Technologies at Turnitin. We built a team of more than 30 data scientists, software developers, UX designers, and curriculum experts in writing instruction in our Pittsburgh, PA office, and built products that reached Turnitin's 30 million students globally. Our office specifically built the Revision Assistant product for K-12 classrooms, and innovated in the core business of Turnitin's originality product with new features like contract cheating detection. The team I built remains at Turnitin today working on new problems like AI-generated writing detection.
Turnitin was acquired by Advance Publications in 2019.
In 2013 I left my Ph.D. studies to found LightSide Labs, an education technology startup that developed natural language processing tools for student writing assessment and feedback. We worked closely with organizations like the College Board and developed our own first-party classroom instruction products.
LightSide Labs was acquired by Turnitin in 2014.
I work with foundations, companies, and researchers to make better decisions about algorithmic technology. I'm occasionally available to collaborate on research projects, especially where I can provide ML/AI expertise for social science questions with natural language data.
