I am a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at the University of Washington, graduating in Fall 2011. In my work, I conceive of, design, build and deploy interfaces to nudge people toward more reflective discussion on the web, particularly for political deliberation. The tools I'm most proud of inventing are Reflect and ConsiderIt. ConsiderIt was deployed in the last election as the Living Voters Guide in partnership with Seattle City Club. These projects are funded by the National Science Foundation. I am lucky to be collaborating with a team of researchers from a variety of disciplines including Political Science and Communication.
In the past, I've been a major contributor to the UrbanSim project, a simulation framework for projecting the effects of land use and transportation planning decisions 20-30 years into the future, conducted research on the social and technical dynamics underlying the production of Wikipedia, and led the technical effort at Flash Volunteer, a neighborhood-centric platform for supporting volunteerism.
These are ALL open source efforts.
If I'm not hacking, you can find me running in the mountains!
