I am a researcher, linguist, podcast host, author, professor, GIS specialist, installation artist, marathoner, and very efficient cook. I currently work at Codecademy where I develop curriculum for the Data Science Domain and manage a team of very talented and smart people to build data science courses. I teach Data Visualization at the CUNY Graduate Center, and find a lot of joy in each of these things.
Built and managed the data science domain team. Designed the data science content roadmap and pioneered a content restructure to align with industry standards. Improved production efficiency by 75% while instilling a culture of ownership and collaboration. Delivered technical improvements through collaborations with engineering, product, marketing and data science. Planned and executed on experiments to validate hypotheses. Served as SME on statistical, NLP, and Machine Learning courses.
Recruited and led 6-person data science team. Partnered with clients to deliver end-to-end machine learning solutions and leverage natural language processing to extract meaning from unstructured data. Empowered clients to interpret results and understand evaluation metrics. Defined performance and success metrics for 150 client-facing machine learning classifiers and systematized evaluation process. Lead data collection and governance, and NLP research and development.
Design and lead socio-spatial research projects about language use as related to urban development in New York City. Used Natural Language Processing (Topic Modeling and Sentiment Analysis with Spacy, sci-kit learn and NLTK) to understand argument strategies in politically charged issues. Contributed to lab-based projects using data visualization and mapping.
Collected a corpus of over 45,000 text messages sent and received by bilingual young adults to analyze the relationship between text messaging and literacy. Proposed a taxonomy to understand the communicative effect of emojis, abbreviations, and other textisms.
Advised on digital research projects and data visualization. Designed technical workshop sequence, and taught Python, NLTK, and QGIS. Established a Python Users’ Group with over 50 participants. Led quantitative research project on community impact for President’s address.
Taught Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics, Language Acquistion, Internet Linguistics, and African Languages.
Worked with native speakers to write educational grammars for 6 different languages, including uncovering syntactic and semantic relationships within the language. Wrote a grammar and phonics program for Lusoga. Identified languages to make new manuals for. Developed a teacher-training program for language teachers.
Taught developmental mathematics courses, and advised and mentored over 250 students on their transition into college.
Established a 501c3 non-profit to increase voter turnout in the Greater Lansing Area. Showed more than 10% increase in the 3 lowest voter turnout districts in Mid-Michigan.
Canvassed on issues regarding water quality in Michigan and helped identify new issues. Lobbied for improved legislation to protect Michigan's waterways.
Work/study/cultural exchange program. Waited tables on a lunch and dinned boat.
Literacies of Bilingual Youth: A Profile of Bilingual Academic, Social, and Txt Literacy Skills
OK as a word can agree, accept, inspire, and describe the world; as an object, OK and its variants (okay, ok, etc.) tell a story about the ways that technology and globalization change the way we communicate.
This book traces the history of the term, data, to the dawn of writing through its maturation with mathematicians and philosophers, into its biblical references and finally into the modern era where the meaning of data has evolved alongside computing power to become a prominent cultural force shaping what we believe to be true.
This chapter in an edited collection explores how politeness is performed within the context of online dating from first message to established relationship.
This book explores the ways in which texting features such as ‘lol,’ emojis, abbreviations, and acronyms is systematic and essential. Highlighting the role of creativity in relationship building and identity performance, this volume extends the boundaries of emerging research on language and digital communication.
This article explores the ways in which language is changing in response to near-universal adoption of digital communication devices.
This article reports on the relationship between academic proficiency and text messaging.
This project explores written language between romantic partners. When complete, individuals will be able to upload their text message history to the site and receive a quantitative analysis of communication in their relationship.
Co-hosted with Sarah Ellis, this podcast explores the relationship between text messaging and dating. Each episode dives deep into how digital communication technologies are changing our langugage, and what that means for modern romantic relationships.
Winner of the 5 Minute Linguist competition at the Linguistic Society of America's annual conference. Using a network analysis of textism adoption across a community of speakers, I found that texters adopt each others' emojis and acronyms, but are resistant to changing their punctuation and laughter.
This project tracts language neighborhoods along the New York City Subway System by visualizing the percent of speakers at each stop.
Urban Language Topographies: Cities as sites of language maintenance. Michigan State University Global Digital Humanities Conference. East Lansing, MI. March 23,2018.
Pragmatics of Digital Communication. Digital Media and Learning Department at New York University. New York, NY. December 17, 2017.
I’m trying to show you who I am: Identity performance in text messaging. Pop Culture Association National Conference. San Diego, CA, April 12, 2017.
“‘Excuse me, please, wya!’ The Construction of Politeness on Cell Phones”. Northeast Modern Languages Association Annual Conference. Baltimore, MD, March 23, 2017.
Yelling at Robots: The End of Language As We Know It?. Panel at Social Media Week, New York. New York, NY, March 3, 2017.
lol i didn’t mean it! Lol as a Marker of Illocutionary Force . Linguistic Society of America annual conference. Austin, TX, January 6, 2017.
The Birth of a Language: The emergence of Txt as an independent language form. Dressler Linguistics Colloquium, Columbia University, New York, NY. October 14, 2016.
Did You Get My Message: The communicative cost of texting in a second language. Second Language Research Forum, Columbia University. New York, NY, September 24, 2016.
Using twitter to define bilingual literacy in a networked world. Panel at the Digital Media and Learning Conference. Boston, MA, March 6, 2014.
Mapping for Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities. Fall 2017. Graduate School of Architecture, Urbanism, and PlanningProject-based seminar on using spatial tools for humanities and social science reseach.
Conflict Urbanism: Language Justice. Spring 2017. Graduate School of Architecture, Urbanism, and PlanningProject-based seminar on how languages in contact shape urban spaces.
Fundamentals of Data Visualization. 2018-present. The Graduate Center at CUNY. Hybrid seminar-studio-lab on data management, effective visualization techniques, and design process. Course culminates in 3 projects and a Final Review/End-of-semester show.
Psychology of Language Learning and Teaching. 2014-2015. Hunter College, School of Education. Hybrid (online/face-to-face). Research seminar on the role that first and second language acquisition processes have in a K-12 classroom.
Teaching Linguistics Across CUNY Campuses. 2013-2015. The Graduate Center at CUNY. Seminar on college pedagogy and course development, now required for all first year graduate students in Linguistics.
Internet Linguistics. 2014. Lehman College, Languages and Literatures. Seminar on the role of digital communication technologies changing language practices.
African Languages. 2013-2014. Lehman College, Languages and Literatures. Project-based course investigating linguistic features of and contemporary issues surrounding African languages.
Pragmatics, Syntax, and Semantics. 2011-2013. Lehman College, Languages and Literatures. .
Pre-Algebra, Algebra, and Intermediate Algebra. 2005-2007.
Interview about digital laughter.
Interview about digital punctuation.
Analysis of 'lol', winner of game show style contest about interesting facts.
Interview about "Languages above the NYC Subway".
Coverage of "Languages above the NYC Subway".