Hi, there!

My name is Zach and I am interested in the connections between science, design, and data. I enjoy making things and sharing knowledge.

Here are some things about me.

Work

I work on the data team at Periscopic, a socially conscious data visualization firm, where we try to do good with data.

MS in Data Science from Columbia University
BA in Neuroscience from Boston University
- Minor in Computer Science
- Magna Cum Laude

I work with data, but I also play with data. I’m making Observable Notebooks, which are interactive javascript notebooks that make it easy to start exploring while still allowing for amazing possibilities. Looking into these in an effort to better communicate data findings/understanding and spark curiosity. And to just have some fun.
I started making icons for Noun Project after wanting some icon headers for a project I worked on over the summer in grad school. Thousands of icons later, it has turned into a fun hobby.
I have made a T-shirt shop called Designed By a Nerd, full of some fun ideas I wanted for myself, the kinds of things where I would want to say “hey, i like your shirt”. Made with love by an outgoing introvert.

While in grad school at Columbia, I worked on an online resource for data visualization called edav.info. It’s a helpful resource for learning about working and presenting data with R, all the while being generated and improved by the students.
I made Bookworm, a way to keep track of what I’m reading using a big ’ol Google Sheet, spruced up with Observable.
I tried making some collegiate notebook marginalia into a typeface, and it actually worked and you can try it. It’s called Koji, a highly geometric typeface I made by hand. Crazy respect for the crazy people who devote themselves to this. Also, I hate kerning sooo much.

I’m definitely more of a cat person. And I’d say I’m a film fan. So I made a Twitter account that posts clips of cats in movies, called FilmCats. It’s a manual process, but I wanted the clips all in one place, hence a feed devoted to films that have cats in them. Meow!
Data is everywhere…even in candy. Made a real-life pie chart and histogram out of M&Ms, grouped by color…I’m not OCD, you’re OCD!
Skittles do this neat color-bleed when they sit in water. Which means you can make a pie chart from the Skittles candy color bleed. And throw in a histogram for good measure.
Grad school will make you do wacky things. Like cover a dorm room wall-to-wall in hundreds of Post-It’s just for the fun of it. In ~~prison~~ grad school, a man’ll do most anything to keep his mind occupied.
In college, everything you printed through the university came with a full-page receipt. So I collected a bunch of print receipts, folded them into origami art, and would leave them around campus.