Bryn L.

Bryn is a current PhD student at the University of Vermont in the Complex Systems and Data Science Program working in the M-Sense Research Group, a collection of researchers focused on developing digital biomarker and therapeutics for improving human health and performance. Originally from Minneapolis Minnesota, Bryn has been an avid traveler and researcher after graduating from the Center of Engineering, Mathematics, and Science high school magnet program in June of 2017. She moved to Grand Junction, Colorado to receive her Bachelors of Science in Computer Science from Colorado Mesa University. She graduated summa cum laude in December of 2020. During that time, Bryn lived in Texas for a summer completing research at University of North Texas for an NSF REU focused on supervised machine learning, emerging technologies, and app development. Bryn also conducted research with Washington State University through another NSF REU the following summer focused on smart environments, clustering algorithms, and natural language processing. Throughout her undergraduate experience, Bryn immersed herself in numerous extracurriculars relating primarily to student life and campus involvement efforts. Namely: Society of Women Engineers; Computer Science Club (of which she held the position of President); International Student Mentorship Program; International Student Alliance; and Engineers without Borders. In Spring of 2019, Bryn was inducted into Upsilon Pi Epsilon, the International Computing and Information Honor Society. In 2020, Bryn was nominated the International UPE 'Scholar of the Year'. Also in 2020, Bryn was awarded Grand Prize Honors at the Colorado Space Grant Consortium 2020 Undergraduate Research Symposium for her individual novel research project, "Constructing an Accessible Low-Budget Stress Detection Biosensor". Also during her undergraduate experience, Bryn guest spoke and volunteered at several STEM promotional student events. Some of these events include: guest speaking at 'Pixel: An Artificial and Technological Revolution' event organized by Bur Oak Secondary School in Ontario, Canada; guest speaking at the Iowa State University Managerial Informatics/Computer Science Club; guest speaking at GoCode's Hour of Code at Fruita Middle School in Fruita, Colorado; guest speaker and volunteering at the Annual D51 Middle School Career Fair in Grand Junction, Colorado; a two time student volunteer and activity team-lead at the Annual Colorado Mesa University Math-Extravaganza event for promoting STEM to high school students. Through the experience of guest speaking and leading the Computer Science club, Bryn developed a passion for the promotion and education of STEM topics. In 2020, Bryn founded @technologybryn, a social media page to communicate and encourage groups within and outside of the technology sphere to learn more about technology, computer/data science, and coding. Now that Bryn is in her graduate program, she has continued to invest time in promotional STEM events. In addition to working as Graduate Research Assistant and doctoral student at University of Vermont, Bryn also currently works as a part-time remote Research Associate for the Sabeti Lab of Harvard through a partnership with the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. She assists in data analysis relating to epidemiological-related research projects. In her free time, Bryn founded a contracting start-up in July of 2021 called BoTech L.L.C.. She hopes to grow this business after her doctoral program after gaining more insights from various advisors and mentors throughout her undergraduate and graduate experience. She currently solely operates all contracting work related to this start-up, which includes two company partnerships as of September 2021. Bryn has interests in topics related to (but not limited to) machine learning, bioinformatics, digital phenotyping, body sensor networks/biological smart environments, behavioral and cognitive science, wearable devices, and - more generally - applications of data science within the health/medical field. She hopes to, through the years, become a more prominent social figure for STEM promotion, much like the well-known Bill Nye, except as a woman - whom other young girls and minority groups can look up to with a greater sense of familiarity/relatability. She also plans to continue to grow her research background to become a more established subject matter expert within her field.