Describe yourself in three words:

Compassionate, curious, & cautious.

What are you reading (or listening to on your mobile device)?

I am currently reading The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers by Maxwell King. I am unfortunately too young to have grown up with Mister Rogers, but when I moved to Pittsburgh years ago, he immediately became one of my heroes. It's quite notable that while he came from great wealth and privilege, he continually expressed modesty and empathy, and used his talent and passion to adapt to new technology to help others. I try to channel that through my work as a librarian, and I get especially inspired on days when I walk by WQED studios, the home to Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, on my way to work. 

Describe ACRL in three words:

Resourceful, community, & supportive.

What do you value about ACRL?

I value having a platform to share and learn with other academic librarians, whether that is at a conference or through the various forums I follow. 

What do you as an academic librarian contribute to your campus?

As a STEM Librarian, I directly support students and researchers in Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, and Materials Science & Engineering. This may vary from acquiring subscriptions to journals and tools, helping faculty navigate our Open Access publishing options, or consulting graduate students who have questions working with data and code. I regularly teach introductory Python workshops for data science and help the community adopt best practices to write and maintain reusable code to enable reproducibility.

I am also a supporting member of our Open at CMU initiative, where a handful of librarians are leading services and programming to advance open research and scholarly practices at CMU and promote the larger initiative nationally, and globally. Having a background in computational chemistry and materials simulations, I'm particularly interested in computational reproducibility. Beyond teaching settings, I also aim to promote reusable data and code through Reproducibility Hackathons, where students are invited to dive into data and code from CMU research projects, trying to replicate the results or even pursue new and original analyses. 

In your own words

I grew up in a small town in New Mexico, and I moved very far from home, picturing that I would become a scientist. Near the end of my PhD, while I found Pittsburgh as my new home, I felt lost. I no longer had a passion to pursue science in academia, and I mainly wanted to apply my technical skills to help others. I was incredibly lucky to find an opportunity at CMU Libraries. Becoming a STEM Librarian was the dream career path that I never knew existed. I found my place helping others solve technical research problems, and my fellow librarians at CMU have become a new family to me. 

Pronouns:he/him

Credentials:PhD

Title:STEM Librarian

Job Function:Liaison librarian to Chemical and Materials Science & Engineering

Workplace:Carnegie Mellon University

Location:Pittsburgh, PA