I am an Associate Professor at Virginia Tech. As a philosopher, I’m interested in the contents and character of the natural world and how we come to know it. Mostly this amounts to a concern with questions about inference and language in science: How do we infer successful theories from limited observations of the world? To what extent can this be achieved by a machine? How and to what do scientific terms refer?

Much of my research is focused on building new kinds of algorithms for automated scientific discovery. In other words, a sort of robot scientist. Doing so is way of testing answers to questions about scientific inference: working algorithms provide the most concrete answers possible about how various sorts of induction are possible. Doing so is also a way of getting at questions of meaning and reference in scientific theory.

As a naturalist, I am particularly interested in the vast diversity of invertebrate life, how it is changing, and how its richness can be conserved. I am the founder and current President of the Virginia Institute for Invertebrates. I’m also a Virginia Master Naturalist and a Councilor on the Board of the Virginia Natural History Society. Most of my efforts in natural history concern the monitoring, study, and conservation of Virginia’s invertebrate wildlife.