I’m a problem-solver. My background and experience are in physics, software development, and biomedical engineering. But my interests and abilities are wide-ranging: writing, editing, data visualization, user interfaces, education, women in technical fields, negotiation, photography, science fiction, sociology, and more. No matter what I’m doing, I apply my ability to analyze a problem, try possible solutions, and iterate based on the results I get. (In other words: science is real.)

I have a Ph.D in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University. My research was in the field of cardiac electrophysiology, a highly interdisciplinary field that involves physics, mathematics (especially nonlinear dynamics), medicine, engineering, and computer science. Specifically, I worked with computational models of the electrical activity of the heart.

My dissertation research focused on integrating real-world population variability into these kinds of models. A computational model simulates an idealized “average” person’s heart. But in the real world, everybody’s heart is slightly different. If we want to use the model to predict whether something (like a drug) increases the risk of a heart problem, then just looking at the idealized “average” heart can only tell us so much. In real life, the drug might affect different people in different ways. It would be really useful if the model could take that into account. I worked on some ways to do that.

I thrive on new knowledge and new challenges. Every day, I learn to solve a new problem or answer a new question. I’d like to keep on doing that.