I have left academia and accepted a job as a Principal Engineer at the Institutional Data Initiative at Harvard Law. By "principal engineer", think "principal software engineer", "principal data engineer", and "principal data scientist".
I appreciate the academic freedom I enjoyed at ICERM and the University of Warwick. One enormous compliment I have for the Academy is that the flexibility to follow my own lines of inquiry and study allowed me to accrue skills that were well-received by industry. In fact, they were perhaps better received by industry than academia.1 1There are interesting things to say here. I'll say more about them in a longer note later.
But I'm also excited for my new role and work. The Institutional Data Initiative is similar to an Applied Research Laboratory. I will be applying and performing interdisciplinary research with (hopefully) very broad applications and interest. The position has a lot of promise, and I'm also excited that I'll be able to do much of my work in the open.
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Comments (1)
2025-10-15 David
I am also moving from in-Boston to near-Boston/Cambridge. Combined with my transition into a new role, I expect to be much less responsive for several weeks.