More Than Code: R for Research, Advocacy, Expression

My work spans data science across multiple domains, with economics and air quality being two areas where I’ve advocated for, applied, and extended open-source practices. More specifically, I’ve used R to compile and analyze long-term air quality data for policy-relevant insights, while also streamlining workflows and promoting reproducible methods in research economics roles within universities and non-profits—where I’ve also advocated for R as an open alternative to the proprietary tools that dominate the field. Beyond these, I engage with diverse projects that draw on R’s flexibility as both an analytical tool and a medium of expression—whether through building transparent workflows, developing reproducible pipelines, or designing clear and communicative visualizations. I also share some of this work through biteSizedAQ, a platform for making air quality data and related resources openly accessible in bite-sized chunks. This talk brings these strands together, showing how R can be used not only as a technical coding tool but also as a way of shaping more open, reproducible, and impactful research dialogues across fields—and as a language of research, advocacy, and personal expression.