About

I use data and machine learning to understand and predict real-world systems throughout science and engineering.

I’m a Postdoctoral Research Scientist at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, working with Dr. Brian Powell.

Research

I’m particularly interested in when machine learning is useful for a scientific problem, what part of the problem it can help solve, and how we can tell whether a model has learned the relationships that drive a system rather than simply producing accurate predictions.

In my current work, I train neural networks to reproduce the behavior of ocean ecosystem models, then use them to combine model predictions with observations more efficiently. These networks can also be analyzed to understand how well they represent the scientific model and what they reveal about the relationships between variables in the modeled system (preprint).

My PhD research approached a related problem from the other direction: when the governing equations are unknown, can we recover them directly from observations? I developed statistical and machine-learning methods for discovering interpretable differential equations from noisy time-series data, resulting in the ARGOS R package and a publication in Communications Physics.

Research areas: scientific machine learning, data assimilation, dynamical systems, uncertainty quantification, and equation discovery.

Teaching and Leadership

In April 2026, I organized the CBIOMES Workshop on Machine Learning Methods for Time-Series Data, a 2.5-day workshop funded through a Simons Foundation proposal I wrote. I taught the second day, covering neural networks and physics-informed neural networks for oceanographic applications and developing hands-on tutorials and example notebooks.

I have also mentored undergraduate research in machine learning, including a project on particle tracking with CERN data.

Background

I completed my PhD in Computational Engineering at Durham University in 2023. I also hold an M.S. in Data Science from Northwestern University and a B.A. in Statistics and Mathematics from Wittenberg University.

Recent Recognition

I received the Pacific Islands Impact Award at Accelerating Research in the Age of AI: A Synergistic Workshop with Google (Google-UH, March 2026) for work on physics-informed neural networks for ocean modeling and data assimilation.