Yet another machine learning and artificial intelligence researcher, but one who really identifies with the somewhat old-school term “natural philosopher” and who would never, under any circumstances, call themselves a “polymath.”

Seeking an advanced degree in computer science with a focus on ML & AI.

About me

Since graduating from University of Minnesota with a B.S. in Mathematics in 2004, I’ve worked and consulted in the insurance, financial services, retail, marketing, and (briefly) agricultural industries, with such job titles as “statistician,” “econometrician,” and “actuary,”¹ among others, the common thread being that we now for some reason call all of these folks “data scientists.”²

These days, I head an applied machine learning research group at a major retailer³ where we work on some pretty cool stuff.⁴ When I’m not working my day job, I take classes as a part-time, distance, non-degree student at Stanford, and try my best to contribute to some of the meaningful AI research happening at that institution.

When not involved in either of those activities, I enjoy cooking, sailing, ridiculously difficult quiz shows, wrenching on British and German cars and motorcycles,⁵ reading science fiction, listening to classical music, enjoying a pint of beer or a glass of homemade mead with friends, or just spending time at home in the woods with my wife and our very average, ordinary cat.

In former lives, I’ve been lucky enough to perform, write, and direct with the amazing Bedlam Theater, and play standard repertoire classical music with the Mississippi Valley Orchestra.

Research Interests

I’m interested in how language models can be integrated into other systems, and whether different learning objectives for large language models can lead to systems that use and interact with natural language more in the way that we do as humans – i.e. whether there are additional tools or feedback mechanisms (possibly related to formal or symbolic reasoning) that can lead to greater apparent presence of mind and self-awareness of conversational agents.

I’m also deeply interested in space exploration (and the shift in perspective that can come from it), and this necessarily means I have more than a passing interest in the applications of machine learning to astronomy, signal processing, and robotics.