Who I am

I am a PhD student in statistics and applied mathematics with an interest in Bayesian modeling, high-dimensional shrinkage methods, and effective visualization techniques. My background is primarily in teaching, but I have spent the summers of 2017 and 2018 interning at JP Morgan Chase in Columbus, OH working on predictive time series models.

Experience

Graduate Student Researcher and Teaching Assistant

UC Santa Cruz - September 2014 - Present

  • Research Bayesian adaptive LASSO methods with Professors Rajarshi Guhaniyogi and Raquel Prado
  • Lead discussion sections for various statistics courses designed for all levels of undergraduate students
  • Grade quizzes and exams

Intern

JP Morgan Chase & Co - June 2017 - September 2017, June 2018 - September 2018

  • Wrote SQL queries to pull information from multiple databases
  • Built models in R to estimate and forecast quantities in tier 1 models (high visibility, high impact)
  • Wrote documentation to interpret and validate model output

Online Instructor

Penn State University - January 2014 - September 2014

  • Contributed to the design of the Introductory Statistics and Elementary Statistics online course curricula, including creation of lab activities using Minitab and SPSS
  • Communicated daily via email and online meeting software with students and department faculty

Education Volunteer

US Peace Corps Mozambique - September 2011 - November 2013

  • Met with provincial- and national-level counterparts in order to plan, fund, and realize the Science and HIV/AIDS Awareness Fair, an annual nationwide competition to further STEM education and provide resources to combat the HIV epidemic in Mozambique
  • Designed and delivered lessons and assessments for math and computer literacy classes in Portuguese to eighth and tenth grade students in a rural village

Instructor/Consultant

Penn State University - May 2010 - August 2011

  • Met with gradate students and faculty from a wide range fo departments in order to help explain designs of experiments and interpret the analysis of data across a spectrum of statistical software, including SAS, Stata, and SPSS.
  • Designed and delivered lectures and assessments for courses on introductory SAS and elementary statistics to classes ranging in size from 24 to 200 students.

Teaching Assistant

Penn State University - January 2009 - May 2010

  • Led lab sections for various statistics courses for all levels of undergraduate students
  • Graded assignments, quizzes, and exams

Education

University of California Santa Cruz

PhD in Statistics, 3.82/4.00 GPA 2014 - 2018

  • Developed adaptive Bayesian regression methods for high-dimensional data problems with applications in the analysis of neuroimaging data
  • Designed and delivered a workshop on statistical analysis for graduate students in the Microbiology and Environmental Toxicology department

Penn State University

Master of Applied Statistics, 3.90/4.00 GPA 2009 - 2010

Penn State University

Bachelor of Science (BS) in Mathematics - 3.52/4.00 GPA 2006 - 2009