Work

B.A. in Computer Science with Honors
Concentration in Linguistics

As part of a project for a disability studies course, I scraped publicly available licensing data for all of Iowa's licensed mental health care practitioners. Although yet unpublished, the goal of the project is for people to be able to instantly receive a list of possible practitioners near them even if the practitioner does not promote themselves on a site like GoodTherapy (which is the case for most of Iowa's rural providers). Additionally, the site explains the differences between professional licenses.

Under the direction of Charlie Curtsinger, I was part of a research group developing Alex, a performance profiler for C and C++ programs on Linux. I focused on the frontend: an Electron app with D3.js flame graphs. In particular, I implemented a fast method of logistic regression in JavaScript so that when users select a time period that displayed decreased performance, they can see a ranked list of which functions were most likely to have caused the discrepancy in less than a second.

During a software development course, I was part of a team of students making a customized front-end for Callisto, a trauma-informed sexual assault reporting system. I gained experience with Django and a user-centered, trauma-informed approach to design.

Under Peter-Michael Osera, I was part of a research group of students developing Orca, a visual proof checker intended to help computer science students understand the connections between formal proof structures and programming structures. I created mockups to coordinate the design of the site and created a small set of SVG icons. Here are a couple of papers about the project:

• “A Bridge Anchored on Both Sides: Formal Deduction in Introductory CS, and Code Proofs in Discrete Math"
• “ORC²A: A Proof Assistant for Undergraduate Education" (paywall)

My college had a SharePoint intranet full of PDF and video resources for students, faculty, and staff which needed to be made accessible. I remediated strange PDF structures, captioned videos, and trained junior workers on how to deal with particularly difficult accessibility issues. Additionally, I worked with the college's Board of Trustees to create a PowerPoint template and style guide that balanced Grinnell's visual identity with accessible design principles.

As part of a disability studies course, I got to conduct an accessibility review on a campus area of my choosing. I selected five websites most used by students: the College's official website, its intranet, its course posting website, and two academic planning sites.

My first student job was helping make my college's catalog of scanned readings more accessible. I scanned, OCRed, and tagged hundreds of documents, replaced dozens with digital-native copies, learned the architecture of PDFs inside and out, and completely reorganized the catalog itself.

This logo was created for the Clear Lake High School and Middle School Bands; it continues to be used in official materials and T-shirts. (Lion from existing school logo, created by Ben Furleigh.)

Designed in tandem with a fellow member for Clear Lake High School's LGBT support club.

After my mom died from breast cancer in 2012, my family and I participated in a charity walk in her memory. Since we recruited enough people to qualify for logo T-shirts, I decided to make one.