Now

Below is a little bit of what I’m working on and doing now, updated every once in a while.

Childhood Cancer Awareness Month

Every September, I raise money for St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital alongside the podcast network Relay, which has raised more than $4 million since 2019. My efforts account for only a very modest percentage of that, but I look to increase it each year. Any amount matters - just $25 will pay for a day’s worth of meals for a patient, whose parents will never see a bill. If you’re reading this and can donate, please do. Thank you.

Professionally

After spending the last five years working with renewables, pricing, and energy efficiency data, I’ve been embracing a new role at the Tennessee Valley Authority. My team focuses on analytics and AI strategy for the enterprise and takes on cutting-edge proofs of concept. Right now, we’re focusing heavily on generative AI (including constraints and governance), so I’ve been working on improving our enterprise CMS search using retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), maintaining R Shiny apps to facilitate our groundwater and geochemical monitoring programs, and supporting our rollout of Microsoft Copilot.

Academically

This summer, I completed my 8th semester (of ten) in my Master’s of Computer Science at Georgia Tech. I’m now in semester 9 and am very eager to knock out these last few classes. This semester, I’m taking Graduate Algorithms, which is infamous in the program. So far, though, I’ve been able to leverage my experience in prior algorithms classes. It’s a nice change of pace to be studying a core computer science competency after spending the summer on classes that overlap more with my specific work at TVA. I appreciate the variety.

Personally

I’m looking forward to some fall movie releases and am rapidly approaching the 100-film mark in my Letterboxd diary for the year. I really enjoyed Weapons in theaters and had the amazing experience of watching Stand By Me in the last showing of the Toronto Outdoor Picture Show for the year.

My yearly theme, the Year of Holding Things Loosely, had taken a bit of a different form over the last couple of months. After getting myself geared up for a lot of potential changes in my work life, I’ve found myself mostly unaffected (keeping my fingers crossed). Ironically, that meant that I needed to settle in and let myself decompress a bit. Allowing myself to go with the flow is another form of holding things loosely.

I’m also nervously watching the Cubs, staring down a month with a lot of short trips around the midwest, and looking forward to cooler running weather.