About
I'm a behavioral researcher and conversation analyst with a PhD in Sociology from UCLA, specializing in the systematic study of naturally occurring human interaction. Over the past decade I've conducted rigorous empirical research on the architecture of communication (how specific interactional choices shape trust, resistance, adherence, and outcomes), with four peer-reviewed publications, mostly in high-stakes medical settings.
I also build stuff. I ship real, live software (not just research findings), including a conference scheduling app that an international academic conference adopted and promoted over its own official app, and a real-time multiplayer scoring platform with live state sync. I like working at the intersection of rigorous behavioral research and hands-on technical execution, and I'm currently focused on roles where that combination is the point: AI experience evaluation, conversation design, and AI product work grounded in how people actually communicate.
Areas of Expertise
Conversation & Behavioral Research
- Conversation analysis (turn-taking, sequence organization, repair)
- Trust-building, resistance, and communication breakdown in high-stakes interaction
- Research design & execution
- Qualitative and quantitative analysis of large audiovisual interaction datasets
- Communication in medical care
- IRB-governed human-subjects research
AI / LLM Practice
- Prompt engineering & LLM evaluation
- Agentic prototyping with Claude Code and the Claude API
- Translating behavioral theory into AI evaluation frameworks and agent design
- Local LLM experimentation (LM Studio) & retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)
Product & Collaboration
- Project management
- Rapid discovery, requirements definition & framework design
- Conversation design (trust-building, repair, affiliation)
- Cross-functional communication with technical and non-technical stakeholders
- Shipping production web applications solo (design → build → test → deploy → maintain)
Experience
Subject-Matter Expert
2026–PresentAligned Labs, Inc.
Training, evaluating, and pressure-testing leading AI models on expert-level sociological knowledge, creating and verifying graduate-level questions and explanations, and assessing whether AI-generated reasoning meets the standards of a trained expert.
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
2024–PresentGeorge Washington University, School of Medicine & Health Sciences
Contributing to an interdisciplinary research program on decision making: defined scope, built the coding scheme, ELAN annotation template, and SOP documentation, and coordinated work across clinicians, measurement scientists, and analysts. Analyzed 35 hours of video-recorded inpatient rehabilitation sessions to build a process model of decision-making under emergent practical problems. Leading a co-authored manuscript that translates our team's findings into clear, actionable recommendations (in progress).
Teaching Fellow
2023–2024Department of Sociology, UCLA
Taught Communication in Medical Care, Conversational Structures, Talk & Social Institutions, and Medical Sociology.
Program Coordinator
2020–2022UCLA Center for Language, Interaction, and Culture (CLIC)
Coordinated interdisciplinary programming for an academic research center: cross-functional program management spanning faculty, graduate researchers, and visiting scholars.
Teaching Associate
2017–2020Department of Sociology, UCLA
Taught Introduction to Sociological Research Methods, Talk & Social Institutions, Conversational Structures, Introduction to Sociology, Contemporary Sociological Theory, and Social Networks.
Web Consultant
2011–2018International Society for Conversation Analysis (ISCA)
Designed and managed the organization's website for seven years. Developed and deployed a production registration and accommodation-booking system for the 2014 International Conference on Conversation Analysis, the earliest evidence of the "researcher who also ships software" thread that runs through the rest of this timeline.