Education
M.A., John Jay College of Criminal Justice (2025, Economics)
Ph.D., New York University (2002, Computer Science)
B.S., University of Illinois (1985, Physics)
Bio
Before studying economics I was a software engineer, I taught computer science at the college level, and I was once a casino dealer. My first paying job, around age 12 or 13, was detasseling corn, but I only did it for a few days.
I am interested in economic development and how uneven development and global inequality are produced and maintained. I have been exploring the history of economic interactions between the US and Central America as a way to gain insight into that question.
Courses Taught
ECO 101: Introduction to Economics and Global Capitalism
Scholarly Work
In economics, I twice presented my research at the Freedom and Justice Summer Conference: In 2024 I spoke about how job guarantee proposals might be improved by taking into account principles and best practices of community development, and in 2025 I gave a short "egg timer" talk on some historical economic interactions between the US and Costa Rica.
In computer science, I worked on smooth navigation in dynamic online maps, and co-authored two journal papers on map labeling in that context: Dynamic Map Labeling (2006), with Eli Daiches and Chee Yap, and Optimizing Active Ranges for Consistent Dynamic Map Labeling (2010), with Martin Nöllenburg, Sheung-Hung Poon, and Alexander Wolff.