About

I’ve spent most of my career trying to make invisible systems visible: underground water, energy infrastructure, patterns in weather and climate, and the information that connects these systems to people’s lives.

I grew up off-the-grid in a small town in the Southern California high desert, raised by a single mother and immigrant whose lessons and impact on my trajectory I’m still unraveling. I studied biology and conflict resolution at Berkeley, taught environmental science to 5th graders in Yosemite, and led National Geographic expeditions in Thailand for high school students. I’ve always been curious. It’s deep and unshakable. Each chapter of life has seemed to open the next, and I’m grateful for all the twists and turns.

In graduate school, I built physics-based models of groundwater flow and contaminant transport in California’s Central Valley, aquifers that underpin much of the nation’s food supply. That work grew into regional models predicting domestic well failures from drought, with a focus on disadvantaged communities who bear the brunt of aquifer depletion. Some of that research was picked up by PBS.

Along the way I started a small consulting company, which taught me as much about entrepreneurship as as it did about data engineering and machine learning. We co-developed the nation’s largest public database of water system boundaries, now used by the US EPA, trained over 400 scientists and engineers through R for Water Resources Data Science, and built IoT sensor networks for groundwater monitoring across California. I also worked with some incredible engineers, geologists, and regulators to write six groundwater sustainability plans across California — blending science, monitoring, and stakeholder education toward one goal: sustainable groundwater for future generations.

Today I lead teams building last-mile AI solutions for electric utilities, with a research focus on using AI to downscale weather forecasts for grid operations.

I’ve given up trying to predict where I’ll be in five years, because I consistently surprise myself and end up somewhere delightful. Outside of work, I’m building AI tools for scientific research, tinkering on personal projects, and working on the basics: Zen meditation, exercise, nutrition, sleep. The more we understand, the bigger the questions we can ask.