After spending many years wearing various hats at the University of Florida (system administrator, software developer, database administrator, team lead) including almost 5 years as a “Data Integration Expert” on a NSF-funded project related to Natural History museum specimen data, I took a leap into the private sector where I survived many technology trials by fire but didn’t survive a corporate buyout during a global pandemic. I did, however, learn many things about modern Cloud software tooling and the cultural shift towards DevOps… which I hope will be useful to IRIS in the coming years.

I joined IRIS in April 2021 as a PostgreSQL Database Administrator and look forward to learning the ins and outs of administering a large PostgreSQL database installation.

I earned a B.S. in Computer Science and Geology from Denison University in Ohio, my home state. I am writing this from my Remote home office in Gainesville, Florida. Florida holds the honor of having the lowest “high point” in the United States, and is pretty boring as far as seismic activity. The natural springs are nice though. I’m not much of a beach person but the coasts are only a couple of hours away. We have sand everywhere. Most of our trails and unpaved roads are made of sand, too.

I hope to someday move to a location with actual elevation. And real dirt. And seasons. In the meantime, I travel when I can and am particularly fond of Tennessee and the Carolinas. I most enjoy going on a trail run, or a gravel ride, or hitting the water on my Stand-Up Paddleboard (SUP).