What is your current position?
Database Administrator (II) for UW’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. I manage a database called “Panda” so I get to tell people I’m the “Panda keeper”.
When did you start working in SMPH? At UW?
Spring of 2019
What does a typical day look like for you?
I work at the hospital 3 days a week, and I try to bike in, which is a pretty nice way to start the day. I’ve usually got some large, long-term project that I’m working on for the ADRC – data sharing fulfillment, developing an app feature, or setting up new image processing pipelines, etc. – and doing that development work is the largest part of my working day. We’ve got roughly 20 years of imaging and cognitive testing data at WRAP/ADRC, and working with that much data can be like steering a battleship.
What is your workplace superpower?
SQL and Python
What is something personal you keep on your desk? (feel free to share a photo if you’d like!)
This picture that my daughter made for me. “Just going to work, man!”
Where are you from originally?
North Dakota, where I lived until I was about 4.
What is your favorite place to spend time in Madison? In the world?
In Madison: probably the UW libraries. In the world: my wife’s family has a farm just outside of Monroe with an apple orchard that I helped plant.
What are you reading right now? (Alternatively: What 1-2 books, articles, or podcasts, can you recommend to your SMPH colleagues?)
“Rising Tide” by John M. Barry, and “Palo Alto” by Malcolm Harris.
Share one fact about yourself that you co-workers might not be aware of.
I like to grow trees – mostly apple trees, but this year I’m trying chestnuts.