About

I am a Data | Computational Social | Network Scientist. In reality I'm just a Scientist that likes to tackle problems that affect people using data.

Why am I here?

My focus is on teaching the concepts of artificial intelligence, complexity, computational analysis, and data science to students of all backgrounds while conducting leading research.

My research mission is to find interesting problems that I believe are broadly important to our understanding of human behavior and our interactions with each other and the environments that we have built for ourselves.

A common thread throughout my research is individual and organizational decision-making. I'm largely interested in why decisions are made, how and if they can be predicted, and what can be done to change those outcomes. This expresses itself in a number of different specific topics in crime, law, and healthcare. In general, I am drawn to problems in spaces that I believe to have a large impact on individuals and society.

So what is NP Complete Heart?

Some time during my third year of graduate school I became mentally sidetracked by the concepts of computational complexity; specifically, NP-complete algorithms and the P=NP problem. This interest was borne out of my first-hand experience trying to use and optimize community identification algorithms but continued to grow. The basic gist is that a NP-complete problem is one where you cannot efficiently locate the best solution through enumeration and the problem gets beyond exponentially harder as the problem size increases.

But you're not a mathematician!

This concept to me inpires thoughts about the incalculable complexities of humans. This incalculable complexity arises because of our emotions (heart) and through the social systems that we build to connect with each other. This concept is what weaves into my research, how can we analyze, predict, and, most importantly, understand the fundamentals of human behavior and our interactions with the world at large.

But where is your expertise?

My expertise is on solving problems with artificial intelligence and data science applications. As I break it out for my MBA students, this process comprises methodology, data, and method implementation--- or as I think of it what to do, what to do it with, and how to do it. For me, this results in a synthesis of my interdisciplinary training---drawing on experimental design from molecular biology, modelling techniques from statistical physics, and prediction methods from data science. Figuring out how to create tools that people will use and benefit from is, in my mind, a distinctly challenging problem that I enjoy.

Do you consult?

I do! I give on-site educational seminars that focus on the fundamentals of artificial intelligence and its applications in business for management and executives. I have given these seminars to a number of clients across multiple business sectors and enjoy working with these clients to learn more about their business and then teaching how they can utilize AI to grow their efforts.