# Jay Patel (@infotainment.bsky.social)

Profile: https://sifa.id/p/infotainment.bsky.social
Headline: Data Scientist
Location: Annapolis, Maryland, United States

## About

Originally a cognitive scientist and educational psychologist/technologist, I am currently focused on UX research and Human-Computer Interaction projects that help agents produce, evaluate, and scale knowledge.

I am especially interested in developing comprehensive software systems for synthesizing empirical, theoretical, and implementation research.

These systems have a dual purpose:   (1) sifting the reliable studies from those unfit for application and (2) acting as tools for discovery and invention  Whether academic or industrial, research can not thrive unless supporting tools lead us to think and act wisely. In my view, the promise of evidence-informed decision-making has not been consistently realized at scale and may not be without significant changes.

## Experience

- **Data Scientist at Episteme, LLC** (2024 – present)
  \- consulting on projects: study design, inferential statistics, data visualization, reporting and presenting results
- **User Experience Researcher at International Monetary Fund** (2022 – 2026)
- **User Experience Researcher at Hamm Interactive** (2022 – 2022)
  \-- UX contract services for Best Buy: 6 months
- **User Experience Researcher at University of Pittsburgh** (2020 – 2022)
- **User Experience Researcher at EPAM Systems** (2021 – 2022)
- **Research Manager at University of Pittsburgh** (2020 – 2021)
  Remote: I am managing educational technology research at the FACETlab in the Learning Research & Development Center.
  
  My projects focus on web apps, educational robotics for learning STEM content, and mobile (iPad) apps for teaching young children to read.
- **Chief Design Officer at Self Employed** (2017 – 2020)
  Advising the design and development of software and hardware at small businesses and large research universities
- **Designer at Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota** (2019 – 2019)
  Redesigned an outdated K-12 transportation engineering curriculum Self-taught all content, worked with SME, and developed for three age groups
- **NSF Research Fellow · LUCID Program at University of Wisconsin-Madison** (2017 – 2018)
  Assisted in the application of a novel AI procedure called machine teaching for chemistry learning with 300+ learners; gained insights into the supposed “black box” of neural networks, wrote two papers
- **UX Researcher and Designer · Learning, Representations, & Technology Lab at University of Wisconsin-Madison** (2017 – 2018)
  Developed AI tutor for learning chemistry with virtual simulations and novel physical manipulatives that I co-created with a peer; designed experiment, ran 100+ participants through mixed methods lab study
- **Data Analyst · IDGI Lab at University of Minnesota** (2017 – 2017)
  Studied pre-literacy skills in preschoolers and kindergarteners using game-based assessments on an iPad, managed & analyzed data
- **Graduate Teaching Assistant · Psychological Science – Applied at University of Minnesota** (2017 – 2017)
  Guided students through activities, discussions, and projects emphasizing applications to education, healthcare, wellness, etc. led the development of midterms and the final; graded numerous assignments, projects, and exams using rubrics
- **Graduate Teaching Assistant · Learning, Cognition, & Assessment at University of Minnesota** (2016 – 2017)
  Taught pre-service teachers to create high-quality assessments and apply psychological research to instructional design; engaged students in discussions and collaborative projects often; aided in assessment design
- **Graduate Research Assistant · Learning Sciences Lab at University of Minnesota** (2015 – 2017)
  In a large team, I assisted with the design, implementation, and analysis of game-based learning studies in a local middle school and developed a coding scheme for qualitative data from scratch
- **Graduate Research Assistant · Cognitive Architecture Lab at University of Minnesota** (2014 – 2017)
  Collected and analyzed data for two experiments on flexible use of strategies; analyzed qualitative & quantitative data for theory-building
- **Research Assistant · Neurochemistry and Cognition Lab at Temple University** (2012 – 2014)

## Education

- **University of Maryland** — Doctor of Philosophy - PhD (2022 – 2026)
- **University of Wisconsin-Madison** — Doctor of Philosophy - PhD (2017 – 2019)
- **University of Minnesota** — Master of Arts - MA (2014 – 2017)
- **Temple University** — Bachelor of Science - BS (2010 – 2014)

## Skills

- Data Intelligence
- Microsoft Power BI
- Statistical Data Analysis
- Python (Programming Language)
- SQL
- Instructional Design
- Literature Reviews
- Academic Writing
- literature review
- inferential statistics
- data visualization
- Adult Education
- instructional design
- Multimedia
- eLearning
- User Interface Design
- Machine Learning
- Microsoft Excel
- R
- SPSS
- Tableau
- CSS
- LaTeX
- Adobe Creative Suite
- Sharepoint
- interviews
- Storytelling
- Communication
- training
- Scholarly Communication
- Game-based Learning
- Statistical Computing
- Assessment Design
- lab experiments
- user studies
- cognitive task analyses
- mixed methods experiments
- ethnographies
- surveys
- qualitative data analyses
- open science practices
- Information Design
- Learning Theory
- Adobe Captivate
- Articulate Storyline
- Data Science
- Universal Design for Learning
- Presentation skills
- Canvas
- R (Programming Language)
- Graphic Design
- User Experience (UX)
- HTML
- Teaching
- Adobe Creative Cloud
- WordPress

## Certifications

- Learn Color Design — Codecademy
- Introduction to HTML — Codecademy
- Learn CSS — Codecademy

## Projects

- **Storyboard Poster** — https://osf.io/tjkdm/
  As part of the Better Poster project, I developed a template to create research posters in the style of storyboards used when planning films, animations, and other multimedia.

## Publications

- For Teaching Perceptual Fluency, Machines Beat Human Experts — Cognitive Science Society (http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~jerryzhu/machineteaching/pub/cogsci18.pdf)
- Machine Beats Human at Sequencing Visuals for Perceptual-Fluency Practice — International Conference on Educational Data Mining (http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~jerryzhu/machineteaching/pub/edm18.pdf)
- How the abstract becomes concrete: Irrational numbers are understood relative to natural numbers and perfect squares — Cognitive Science (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cogs.12619)
- A Collaboration Script for Nonverbal Communication Enhances Perceptual Fluency with Visual Representations — International Conference on the Learning Sciences (https://website.education.wisc.edu/rau-lab/pubs/RauPatel2018_ICLS.pdf)
- Cognitive control deficits during mecamylamine-precipitated withdrawal in mice: Possible links to frontostriatal BDNF imbalance — Neurobiology of Learning and Memory (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1074742716000150?via%3Dihub)

## Volunteering

- Volunteer at Educational Equity in Action
- Student Volunteer at Cognitive Science Society

## Honors and awards

- National Science Foundation LUCID Fellowship
- Wolfram Award
- LearnLab Scholarship
- CARAS Undergraduate Research Travel Award
- CUNY Graduate Center Fellowship
- Temple University Merit Scholarship

## Languages

- English (native)