Our Team

Jason Owen-Smith
IRIS Executive Director
Jason manages the activities of IRIS and is the liaison with future and current Member Institutions. He is an ex officio member of the IRIS Board of Directors. Together with collaborators, Jason works on projects that examine the dynamics of high-technology industries, the public value of the research university, and the network organization of surgical care. Jason’s work makes use of large-scale administrative data to study fundamental process of network change and their effects in policy relevant domains.
[email protected]

Dharma Akmon
Managing Director
Dharma 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.
[email protected]

Najla August
Lead Developer
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.
[email protected]

Kevin Bjorne
Technical Director
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.
[email protected]

Amy Butchart
Lead Programmer
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.
[email protected]

Jiazong Gong
Data and Development Engineer
Jiazong is a data and development engineer. His diverse programming expertise contributes to the development of interactive data reports via data visualization technologies. Additionally, he supports mining publicly available datasets and implementing machine learning models to derive insights from data.
[email protected]

Lauren Grossman
Communications and Membership Coordinator
Lauren promotes IRIS data use, expands membership, and manages IRIS messaging, including newsletters, social media, annual reports, and the website. She develops strategies to engage the academic community, supports current and potential members, and raises awareness of IRIS among universities.
[email protected]

Jeong-Woo Ko
Data Analyst
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.
[email protected]

Michael Little
Senior Project Manager
Michael facilitates the completion of IRIS projects by tracking project performance, developing detailed work plans and estimates, and managing tracking systems.
[email protected]

Joseph Redinger
Data Analyst
Joseph 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.
[email protected]

Shadi Shakeri
Data Science Specialist
Shadi cleans, links and disambiguates the IRIS UMETRICS dataset, which is released to research users as part of the IRIS Research Support Team. She also assists researchers that use the IRIS UMETRICS dataset by answering questions regarding the dataset, aggregates and de-identifies the data for research purposes, and debugs coding issues.
[email protected]

Matt VanEseltine
Senior Data Scientist
Matt is a senior data scientist working with large-scale data for causal and policy analysis. He creates and manages complex data architectures from large-scale restricted and public sources to support INK/IRIS research projects and contribute to IRIS production work.
[email protected]

Meg Weideman
Administrative Assistant Senior
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.
[email protected]

Karen Woollams
Business Manager
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.
[email protected]
Contact Us
Membership Inquiries and Operations:
Dharma Akmon, Managing Director
(734) 615-7464 [email protected]
Technical Issues:
Kevin Bjorne, IRIS Technical Director
(734) 936-0465 [email protected]
Researcher Access:
[email protected]
Scheduling Requests:
Meg Weideman, IRIS Administrative Assistant
(734) 615-0015 [email protected]
Contracts, Invoicing & Grant Administration:
Karen Woollams, IRIS Research Coordinator
(734) 936-0444 [email protected]
Institute for Research on Innovation and Science
University of Michigan
Institute for Social Research
Survey Research Center
330 Packard St, 2354 Perry Bldg
Ann Arbor, MI, 48104-2910
P: (734) 615-0015
F: (734) 763-3862