Background  [CV]

I am currently at Google doing hardware logic design for a seekrit project using Haskell, BlueSpec, and Rust. In case of confusion, this is the same project our team was working on at X: The Moonshot Factory (formerly known as Google[x]), but we graduated from X and got acquired by Google LLC in 2019. Naturally, everything I say here, on my blog, and on twitter is personal and in no way reflects X's or Google's position on anything.

I have a BA in linguistics with a minor in anthropology from Reed College. I began a masters in computer science at Portland State, and completed it at Johns Hopkins. Between finishing my MSE and starting my PhD, I spent a year as a research programmer working on machine translation. Since 2009 I've been working towards a dual doctorate degree in cognitive science and computational linguistics at Indiana University. (Currently still ABD, but should be finishing very soon.) In 2011 I did a doctoral fellowship at McMaster University, helping teach graduate students how to design domain-specific languages and how to implement them in Haskell. And in 2015 I worked on a probabilistic programming language/system.

Non-academically, I served on the board of directors at Free Geek where I also volunteered as a build instructor and system administrator. And, while at Portland State, I worked at the CAT teaching Perl and doing system administration for the Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science.

Activism

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
They are endowed with reason and conscience
and should act towards one another in a spirit of fellowship.
(Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 1)

An important part of my life is social justice activism. Due to the intersectional nature of marginalization and oppression, we cannot dismantle any one form of injustice without also tackling others. While it may at times be pragmatically useful to focus on particular topics, these systems of oppression reinforce one another and cannot be easily (nor meaningfully) disentangled. Consequently, I take an extremely wide view of my work towards liberation. My aim is the liberation of all people from all forms of social injustice.

Some issues I take particular interest in include gender/sexuality (esp: femme/​feminine positivism, transgender/​nonbinary/​genderqueer, bisexuality, asexuality, polyamory, and bdsm/​kink), physical & mental ability (esp: autism, anxiety, depression, PTSD, chronic pain, chronic fatigue, dyslexia, visual impairment, mobility impairment, disordered eating), physical, sexual, & psychological abuse, and the combined issues of racism, classism, poverty, colonialism, homelessness, and the digital divide.

I write about these issues on my blog and on twitter. As a starting point for my essays on the subject: this is my definition of “feminism” and “sexism”. Much of my activism is about dismantling Silence Culture. And I currently assume a projectivistic theory of identity.

Hobbies

For fun I read (scifi, fantasy, romance,…), play games (boardgames, videogames, tabletop roleplaying,…), listen to music, and drink way too much coffee. Physically I’m into biking, hiking, and dancing; I was formerly into rockclimbing, fencing, tai ji quan, & aikido, and would love to find communities to get back into them.