Misc.

2022 Secretary's Diversity Award - As member of the Dept. of the Interior Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Strategic Plan team

2020 Exceptional Service Award - Team, Defenders of Wildlife, to the Endangered Species Act rollbacks team

2018 Exceptional Service Award - Team, Defenders of Wildlife, to the Center for Conservation Innovation

2013 Outstanding Teaching Award for Biology of Birds - The University of Texas, College of Natural Sciences

2011 President Powers Fellow - The University of Texas

2005 US Department of Interior Star Award for exceptional work practices

2004 US Department of Interior Star Award for exceptional work practices

2002 US Department of Interior Star Award for exceptional work practices

2000 US Department of Interior Duck Stamp award for field research

1996 Eagle Scout, Boy Scouts of America

1996 Boy’s State of Virginia delegate

1995 Vigil Honor, Order of the Arrow, Boy Scouts of America

Associate Editor for Conservation Letters

Reviewer for Conservation Science and Practice, BioScience, Endangered Species Research, Environmental Science & Policy, BMC Genomics, Behavioral Ecology, The Open Conservation Biology Journal, Animal Ecology, and Biology Letters

Graduate Student Assembly Representative for The University of Texas Section of Integrative Biology; member of Legislative Affairs Committee, 2010-2011

Tutor/Mentor, Defenders of Wildlife, 2015-present; University of Texas, College of Natural Sciences, 2008-2009; Lord Fairfax Community College, 1997-2000

Fully versed in standard software, e.g., Microsoft Office, GSuite, and many other applications such as MAMP, QGIS, various databases (e.g., SQLite, Elasticsearch, MongoDB). Experience with ArcGIS and other software.

Extensive programming experience with R, Python, Go, Bash, viml, HTML, CSS, SQL, and (more limited) Javascript, C, and C++; public code repositories at GitHub. Make extensive use of standard and emerging data science tools for analysis and reporting; see collections of tools at CCI home page. Statistical toolkit includes classical methods, from linear models to nonparametric classification, to emerging machine learning tools, including Natural Language Processing (e.g., topic modeling), image processing, and classification.

Early adopter of new software and hardware. On the software side, this includes web (e.g., Slack) and desktop applications, as well as early experimental developments like the dat protocol and the Beaker browser. Hardware includes web-connected weather stations, data loggers, and drones.

2014-present Mentor and advise graduate students in research. Statistics, high-performance computing, science communication for policy, and ESA

2018-2020 Endangered Species Act short course, Smithsonian-Mason School of Conservation

2012-2013 Informal programming courses for undergraduates and graduate students

2009-2013 Biology of Birds, Spring semesters; Biostatistics, Fall semester

2008, 2010 Introductory Biology, parts I and II, Fall 2008 and Fall 2010 (respectively)

1993-1996 Camp Rock Enon (Boy Scouts), environmental science and High Adventure