I was born in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1980. I have one sibling, who has an intellectual disability. She continues to teach me the value of compassion. I lived in Oxford, Mississippi, and St. Louis, Missouri, before finally landing in Greenville, South Carolina, for middle school and high school. I graduated from Clemson University in 2001 and studied primarily Computer Science and also Religion under Steven Grosby.
During college, I spent a lot of my spare time trying to help start a church, Downtown Community Fellowship of Clemson. After college, I studied at Princeton Theological Seminary. I learned a lot and even worked under Jim Charlesworth on the Princeton Dead Sea Scrolls Project. Nonetheless, I decided that the pastorate was not where I was to spend my life. I continue to use my theological knowledge by occasionally teaching Sunday School and supporting the activities of life in reading and writing.
I went back to Clemson, took pre-med classes, programmed computers at Clemson’s Center for Advanced Engineering Fibers and Films (CAEFF), and got married to my wife. We then headed to medical school at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, South Carolina.
During my time as a medical student, under Gabe Virella‘s direction, I extended the CAMPS program – written in Apple OS 9 that gave students practice in differential diagnosis – into a website (WebCAMPS); it was originally developed by biomedical-informatics pioneer Bill Schwartz. I also worked on my first mobile apps – a program which tracked a family’s vaccine record (also with Bill Schwartz) and a pair of apps which supported communication among transplant surgeons (with the American Society of Transplant Surgeons). Of my classes and rotations, I enjoyed family medicine, OB/GYN, psychiatry, public/global health, and a rotation in Dr. Thaddeus J. Bell’s clinic studying health care inequities while delivering primary care.
In medical school, I had trouble balancing the requirements for reduced sleep of a doctor’s life and the extended sleep requirements from a medical condition I have. I desired to continue with something in the medical field. Therefore, my wife and I researched urban centers for medical technology. We chose Nashville, Tennessee, with its vibrant health IT community and Vanderbilt University Medical Center. We moved there in 2012 with our newborn daughter.
I have worked at Vanderbilt for over five years now and am very happy with the work opportunities there. I program computers at the Vanderbilt Institute for Translational Research (VICTR). Our work supports activities that translate basic research to medical practice – “from bench to bedside.” It satisfies my yearning to help out with the medical arena while “scratching my itch” for technology. REDCap software is developed there, and our teams use it to run the research enterprise more efficiently. I am a member of the REDCap Data Core team and the Edge for Scholars teams. I am the lead developer of Flight Tracker for Scholars.
I highlight my mentors along my journey because I would not be where I am or who I am without them. They have helped light my path, and I credit them for laying the foundation for my life and work. Teachers and mentors at all levels deserve our respect as they earn it each day.
Nashville is a great place to live. We live on the southeast side of town. My daughter attends Meigs Academic Magnet Middle School, and my wife teaches English-Language Learners at Apollo Middle School. We are members of First Presbyterian Church (where Andrew Jackson was once a member). With each month’s paycheck, I buy several books from Amazon.com to read voraciously, often with my cats around.