# About Me

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I have always found the empirical human experience deeply fascinating, as well as how different natural and human systems at different scales interact with each other. This fascination originally led me to a BSc in Physics with a Mathematics minor from the Pennsylvania State University (PSU). This education gave me a fundamental understanding of the way reality works, and how seemingly distinct processes can be related. Wanting to apply my more theoretical understanding, I worked as an Atmospheric Chemistry Researcher in the [Brune Group at PSU](https://www.met.psu.edu/directory/william-h-brune), focusing on OH reactivity in both laboratory and _in situ_ environments. This fieldwork operating the [ATHOS instrument](https://espo.nasa.gov/instrument/Airborne_Tropospheric_Hydrogen_Oxides_Sensor) took me to [Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany](https://amt.copernicus.org/articles/10/4023/2017/), South Korea through the [KORUS-AQ field study](https://www-air.larc.nasa.gov/missions/korus-aq/), and (quite literally) around the world on the [Atmospheric Tomography mission](https://espo.nasa.gov/atom). My research here sparked a passion for Earth System Science and taught me the value of interdisciplinary teamwork.

To continue my education in Earth System Science I pursued a PhD in Geoscience with a Climate Science Dual-Title, again from PSU. My doctoral research focused on how deep uncertainties pervade the complex, multi-disciplinary, and high-dimensional problems that define Earth System Science. Addressing these deep uncertainties requires establishing a conceptual model that assists in developing a hypothesis that advances our understanding of Earth and/or better informs our space of consequential, decision-relevant choices. [Exploratory modeling](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2020.102186) is uniquely suitable for this task, as it constitutes both philosophy and tool for aiding in hypothesis-testing by capturing relevant uncertainties through a surfeit of plausible system assumptions and their implications. To this end, I used exploratory modeling in two distinct but complementary contexts: (1) with the [Foley Group](https://sites.psu.edu/bjf5382/) to address deep uncertainty that arises from epistemic sources regarding incomplete geophysical model formulations in coupled mantle thermal-water evolution systems, and; (2) with the [Hadjimichael Group](https://www.hadjimichaelgroup.info/) to address deep uncertainty that arises from aleatoric processes in a decision-making environment regarding agricultural producers’ water demand sensitivities to the hydroclimate.

When not engaged in research I can be found playing TTRPGs, building small videogames, ingesting fantasy and science fiction media in all its forms, and doting on my wife and dog.