Our Team

Najla is a data visualization expert and applications developer. She stays in the forefront of advancing technologies and is skilled in a variety of programming platforms and languages. Her passion outside of work includes camping and hiking.
anajla@umich.edu

Kevin is member of the IRIS leadership team and oversees all aspects of the technical operations of the organization. He works closely with member universities, IRIS staff, and partner organizations like the federal government to provide accurate and meaningful products to be used by IRIS members.
kbjorne@umich.edu

Chris develops code for data curation, analysis and visualization; prepares materials for various training workshops; and helps the Research Support Team handle requests from researchers using IRIS data.
chribrwn@umich.edu

Amy collaborates and coordinates with data curators, researchers, and analysts at federal agencies and at IRIS member institutions. Her work as a programmer on the IRIS team focuses on designing and documenting code to link restricted data sets and producing data products and analytic data sets. Additionally, she conceptualizes and designs additional metrics that can be built using IRIS and federal data.
butchart@umich.edu

Nancy handles the day-to-day operations of IRIS, including human resources, financial oversight, and management of internal systems and processes. Additionally, she is part of the IRIS leadership team, helping to set strategic goals and priorities for IRIS. Growing and sustaining the IRIS membership is a key part of her portfolio, as is work with the IRIS Board of Directors. Nancy is avidly outdoorsy, enjoying kayaking and rock collecting; she also plays the piano and takes urban ballroom dance lessons.
nbirk@umich.edu

Diksha develops programs to download, ingest and update large-scale datasets, performs quality checks, documents the data, and prepares them for integration into existing IRIS projects. She also contributes to efforts to scrape the web to augment IRIS data, implement machine-learning approaches to naming and data linkage projects, and improve IRIS disambiguation processes.
dikshad@umich.edu

Elissa designs, writes, tests and revises programs that import, link and summarize data for IRIS reports; designs and writes programs to implement new metrics for IRIS reports; and maintains and updates exisiting programs to account for newly identified issues and receipt of new data tranches.
eairhamy@umich.edu

Jinseok’s work focuses on understanding the human interaction patterns extracted from large-scale, semi-structured and unstructured data generated from diverse information and communication technologies. At IRIS, he will provide expertise in name disambiguation of administrative datasets and work on research projects examining the role research experience plays in the career trajectories of students at various levels.
jinseokk@umich.edu

Jeong-Woo writes and maintains programs linking and summarizing data and making metrics for use in client reports; extracts, transforms and loads data into IRIS data servers; cleans and tests data; and creates data summaries in response to a variety of requests.
jwko@umich.edu

Michael facilitates the completion of IRIS projects by tracking project performance, developing detailed work plans and estimates, and managing tracking systems.
mhlittle@umich.edu

Dan’s portfolio includes engaging with IRIS members to promote best practices in using IRIS data and making IRIS work visible on campus, assisting with member expansion efforts by developing compelling strategies to promote IRIS to prospective member universities, and growing the research use of IRIS data through targeted outreach. Dan manages IRIS messaging, including newsletters, social media, annual reports, and the website.
dmeisler@umich.edu

Natsuko Nicholls leads the IRIS Research Support team with primary responsibility for all aspects of data provision, documentation, and privacy protection. She holds a Ph.D. in political science and is herself an active research user of the IRIS UMETRICS dataset in the IRIS infrastructure designated to manage, transform, and analyze IRIS member universities’ administrative data for research. Her research interest lies within the sociopolitical impact of research, currently working with a useful administrative data source, the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) database to show interesting empirical evidence of university contribution to the public good through researchers’ federal advisory service in the context of university R&D spending.
hayashin@umich.edu

Rob develops tools and scripts for IRIS to clean, maintain and integrate large administrative data sets. He also produces visualizations and provides support to the IRIS Technical Director in ensuring the robustness of the IRIS data system. His work is used in producing IRIS reports to universities and in creating and maintaining the IRIS data made available to universities.
rtruex@umich.edu

Matt is a sociologist and data scientist working with large-scale data for causal and policy analysis. He studies the effects of scientific infrastructure, training, and initiatives. At IRIS, he also contributes to data development and linkage for research and reporting.

Meg provides logistical support for IRIS, managing calendars and scheduling along with meeting coordination and support. Her portfolio includes office management and general administrative oversight, as well as event management. Meg’s extensive background in university administration is eminently useful.
megdw@umich.edu

Karen provides pre and post-award grant administration, budget management and reporting, and print and digital publicity material design and production.  She can help with IRIS memberships and member invoicing, contracts, and assorted financial matters.  Karen is passionate about local Habitat for Humanity work and enjoys hiking, gardening and singing with the UM Choral Union.
woollams@umich.edu

Yang designs, writes, tests and revises programs that import, link and summarize data for IRIS reports; designs and writes programs to implement new metrics for IRIS reports; and maintains and updates existing programs to account for newly identified issues and receipt of new data tranches.
zzyang@umich.edu