Executive Roles
Turnitin
Vice President of New Technologies
2014-2018
Led all departments in launching Revision Assistant, an ed-tech product using machine learning to give feedback on student writing. RA has helped hundreds of thousands of students learn to write and is used in numerous integrated products, including Khan Academy, where it is the only official SAT Practice endorsed by the College Board.
Worked on the executive leadership team during a 3-year period where annual recurring revenue grew by tens of millions of dollars, with industry-best customer retention and a profitable business model.
Grew the company’s Pittsburgh office to 35 employees (10% of the company), including an industry-leading AI team writing production code and publishing in top-tier venues.
Championed the company’s shift to machine learning products, user-centered design practices, customer success, and other standard best practices in B2B SaaS.
Launched a startup out of Ph.D. research in natural language processing and machine learning at Carnegie Mellon University; bootstrapped growth to 10 employees.
Won grants and contracts totaling more than $1 million from organizations like the College Board, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the US Department of Education.
Sold within 18 months without taking institutional VC funding.
Academic Roles
University of Pennsylvania
2019-Present
Carnegie Mellon University
2018-2020;
2009-2013
Instructor at the School of Social Policy and Practice. Designed two new courses from scratch for teaching core skills of computer science in a new program, the Data Analytics certificate in the Social Policy Masters program. This allowed the school to immediately increase capacity of the program from 10 to 25 new students annually.
In 2020, this program was expanded again, from 25 to 40 students.
MSSP 607 “Practical Programming for Data Science,” Fall 2019, Fall 2020
MSSP 608 “Practical Machine Learning Methods,” Spring 2020, Spring 2021
Entrepreneur-in-Residence for Project Olympus from 2018-2019, advising students and faculty on starting businesses and commercializing research, with Kit Needham and Lenore Blum.
External mentor for Tepper School of Business course “Marketing For Entrepreneurship,” with Dave Mawhinney and Robert Blattberg, 2014
Frequent teaching assistant with Prof. Carolyn Penstein Rosé:
“Computational Models of Discourse Analysis” semester-long graduate course in computer science (once, 2013).
“Applied Machine Learning / Machine Learning in Practice” semester-long graduate course for non-computer-scientists
(six times, 2010-2012).“Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning” intensive one-week workshop at the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center (three times, 2010-2012).
“Internship Program in Technology-Supported Education” three-week intensive workshop at the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (twice, 2009-2010)
Gates Foundation & Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
Policy Advisor, 2018 (with Viraj Kamdar and Sara Allan)
IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
Research Intern, 2013
Bedford, Freeman, & Worth Publishers
Research Consultant, 2011
Digikey
Software Development Intern, 2008
University of Minnesota, Morris
Research Assistant, 2007-2009 (with Elena Machkasova)
The University Register at UMM
Editorial roles, 2005-2009
Awards / Grants
30 Under 30 (Education)
Forbes, 2017
“Literacy Courseware Challenge” Grantee
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 2013-2014
Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Grantee
Institute of Education Sciences, US Department of Education, 2014
Global Shaper
World Economic Forum, 2013
IBM Ph.D. Fellowship
IBM Research, 2013
Siebel Scholar
Thomas and Stacey Siebel Foundation, 2011
McCree Award for Mathematical & Computer Sciences
University of Minnesota, Morris, 2009