I joined the START Consortium at the University of Maryland at College Park as NSF Post-doctoral Research Associate in Computational Social Science in August 2015. I received my doctorate in Public and International Affairs at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh in August of 2015.  I received my Master's degree in the inaugural class of the Public Policy program at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, before interning for the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, Germany. I have completed trainings in Text-as-Data (ICPSR), network analysis (CASOS and at INSNA), qualitative analysis (IQMR), and Turkish (Critical Language Scholarship Program in Ankara, Turkey), and performed intensive fieldwork for my dissertation in Turkey. Below are a few photos: in Istanbul for an interview with constitutional law professor and drafter Prof. Dr. Erğun Özbüdün, in Ankara at a political rally for the AKP in 2012, when President Erdoğan was still Prime Minister and could only hold that office until 2023, and the most frequently seen landscape, myself in front of a bunch of books I likely have not read, but want to read, while instead I stare at a computer.

I am also an identical twin to Molly McGrath, to whom I owe a debt of gratitude for my slightly unhealthy amount of persistence in solving intractable problems (her research supports international union campaigns). We are often confused for one another, but we are indeed, separate human beings.