I completed my Ph.D. in computer science at UC Santa Cruz in December 2014. I worked with Dr. Gabriel Elkaim in the Autonomous Systems Lab, which studies issues of control in automated systems. Drs. Renwick Curry and Alex Pang also served on my dissertation committee.

Broadly, my research focused on autonomous systems operating in uncertain environments, i.e., ones they have not be fully programmed for. This involves many different issues, including learning, attention, and decision making. At the moment, I am specifically working on developing systems that are capable of successful long-term autonomy, which includes navigation, event identification, and goal formation.

Currently, I am a researcher at Smart Information Flow Technology (SIFT). In my time here I have been involved with research broadly focused on using automation to enhance how humans interact with computational systems. This has involved designing tools to enhance the results from sensor processing and ATR (automated target recognition) systems, to streamline the process of evaluating human/robot team performance, and to use signal processing techniques to allow a system to estimate a user's cognitive workload based on its interactions with the user.

My current research is exploring how to use cheap, off-the-shelf technology to use EEG/ECG/EMG data to estimate a user's cognitive state in real time. The tool I am building as a proof of concept will allow a user to use EEG to control a quad copter.

You can find information such as my resume and CV at here .

In a previous life, I was an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Computer Science at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin. I have a Ph.D. in Psychology from Carnegie Mellon University where I worked with Herbert A. Simon and Ken Kotovsky. My focus was in cognitive processes, specifically in examining how information was organized in semantic memory.