Meet the Team

Meet our team of IT professionals dedicated to advancing the IPUMS and ISRDI missions!

Leadership

Fran

IT Director

Fran originally planned to become a garbage truck driver (coolest thing ever to this 4-year-old boy), but the gift of a PCjr when he was 8 sparked a hobby interest in programming, typing in BASIC programs from the back of Family Computing magazine. Years later, he would find himself in the right place (a science and tech high school) at the right time (the birth of the Web), which changed his life course completely and led him to a career in computer science and IT.

After several years in private industry he moved to higher education where he has been ever since, splitting time between software development, system administration and management. In 2011 he moved to his wife’s native Minnesota and joined what was then the Minnesota Population Center, and has served as IT Director since 2012.

Outside of work, Fran is likely to be found making a horrible mess of the kitchen, cruising around on his e-bike, or off the grid with his family in the camper.

Product Team

Alex

Team Manager

Alex started his career in Industrial Design in Sydney, where he designed exciting objects such as a hinge, a pager, and a collection of spears. Shortly thereafter, Alex transitioned to digital media, where he eventually found fulfillment in the budding field of user experience design. Alex spent 8 years working in Boston for MassArt, Suffolk University, and MIT, and joined the ISRDI team in 2015 as their lead user experience designer. These days he serves as the manager of the Product Team.

Canin

Developer 1

Canin began coding during the GeoCities and Angelfire era; though it was not until much later, while working at a local pub, that he was able to hone his skill enough to be marketable.

At ISRDI, working for the product team, Canin helps manage the Drupal ecosystem, while gaining familiarity with the remaining suite of applications and frameworks used by the Institute. He proudly helped lead the IPUMS Document Collection project from concept to product; and often finds himself scratching surfaces only to find sinkholes beneath, a computational splunker-er of sorts, if you will.

A curious purveyor of whimsical phrases, outside of the Institute Canin continues his scholastic pursuits, along with a few musical interests, and the occasional foray into the culinary arts; along with maintaining a penchant for dancing.

Casey

Developer 2

Casey joined the ISRDI IT Product Team as a Web Application Developer in 2022. At ISRDI, Casey has contributed to a variety of applications using some combination of Ruby on Rails, Docker, Drupal, and Python. Prior to starting at ISRDI, she completed her Bachelor’s degree in computer science and neuroscience and spent 5 years working primarily on Java applications for Minnesota IT Services at the Minnesota Department of Health. Outside of work, Casey enjoys crochet, reading, and spending time with her friends, family, and cats.

Dan

Developer 4

Dan has been writing software since 2005 when he started as a Microsoft developer for a small consulting company. After 7 years of C#, Windows Forms, and IIS, he decided to make a switch and became a Ruby on Rails developer for the MPC.

In his free time, he enjoys homebrewing, cooking, canoeing, and tinkering with home automation.

Kyohei

Developer 3

While working as a data entry clerk at a software company, Kyohei found an opportunity to turn his hobby of programming into a career. He moved to the IT support and software test automation teams, and later left the company to work as a web developer at a small college. In 2020, Kyohei joined ISRDI as a Developer on the IT Product Team, where he works on improving and expanding the institute’s collection of web applications. Outside of work, Kyohei enjoys playing guitar and trying new foods.

Marcus

Developer 4

After many years of schooling in Civil Engineering, Marcus surprised his family, friends, and himself by taking a software development position at a Boston-area startup. A couple of jobs and a trip back to Minnesota later, he landed at the fledgling MPC/ISRDI in 2002, where he happily remains to this day.

After spending a number of years managing a team of ISRDI developers, Marcus is now a full-time software developer on the ISRDI IT Product Team, maintaining and expanding ISRDI’s ever-growing portfolio of web-based software.

When not writing code for the Product Team, Marcus can frequently be observed running along the banks of the Mississippi or attempting to wrangle his extremely energetic young daughter.

Phaedrus

Developer 2

Phaedrus began programming in 1988, web development in 1995, and joined the Minnesota Population Center (MPC) in 2007. He works on almost every one of our projects with a web interface.

Phaedrus’ primary interest in web development is interface design and how people use websites, and he enjoys the constantly evolving environment of the web and trying to best apply good programming and design techniques to new platforms and technologies. Phaedrus truly appreciates the opportunity to bring his skills to ISRDI as learning from the researchers who are at the core of our mission is fascinating and this is a place where he believes he can contribute to positive change in our society and world.

As a part of ISRDI’s product team, Phaedrus has more recently been stretching beyond his HTML/JS/CSS/UX skills to blow the rust off his non-browser-based programming in order to move more towards becoming a full stack developer. It’s a lot of fun (albeit occasionally frustrating) to contribute as an expert in some areas and as a novice in others.

Data Team

Natalie

Data Team Manager

Natalie’s career in tech started at the Mall of America Apple Store. Though she continues to provide her parents with world class customer service for their Apple products, she has since left the mall to lead people and projects in IT organizations, at a SaaS company, and for federal government agencies. She joined ISRDI in 2024 as the data team manager. Outside of work, Natalie prefers to be as far away from computer screens as possible, ideally reading novels or sports journalism, birdwatching, or playing tennis.

Colin

Data Engineer 4

Colin originally got interested in tech through game programming. He ended up working as a call center technician for Zeos/Micron in the mid 90s, during which he spoke to around eight thousand people, most of whom you could locate on an anger spectrum ranging from mildly put out to incoherent with rage. He left to begin a startup in the lead-up to the tech crash.

Colin started at MPC in 2001 as a “Junior Application Programmer” and now works a senior software developer. He’s been responsible for data extraction for the MPC’s end users (the “Extract Engine”) for IPUMS and Terra Populus and NHGIS in its latest version. Also responsible for data conversion on all microdata products.

Currently he uses C++ 11, Java and Ruby professionally. For hobby projects Colin has also tinkered with Go, D, Scheme, Perl, and is interested in learning Rust and Clojure.

Joe

Data Engineer 3

Joe is a former historical mansion tour guide, PhD dropout, and two-time runner up to the Minnesota state speech competition for dramatic prose. Trained as a sociologist, Joe started with ISRDI as a researcher working with Current Population Survey (IPUMS CPS) and American Community Survey / Census (IPUMS USA) data, as well as working on the user support team before ultimately being transmogrified into a software developer. He also played approximately 9,520 hours worth of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 on the Sega Dreamcast before retiring in 2006.

At ISRDI Joe has worked with microdata researchers to develop data management software, optimize data processing, and turning round holes into square holes (to better accomidate our round pegs… or wait… dang it!). This work has brought him into contact with Python, Ruby on Rails, Rust, Docker, Jenkins, and Perl.

When they let him out of the basement, Joe enjoys biking around the Twin Cities without getting sweaty, forcing his coworkers to look at pictures of his children, and ranting (but only occasionally raving).

Kevin

Data Engineer 3

Kevin joined the Minnesota Population Center in 2005. His work centers on delivering domestic aggregate and spatial data via www.nhgis.org. Having done some work on the web site itself, Kevin’s primary focus is on organizing, building, and deploying data and metadata. His experience includes working extensively with Smalltalk, Ruby, and Python. Kevin also has a background with GIS, having earned his MGIS in 2008. His interest in both IT and geography play a key role in his day-to-day activities with NHGIS aggregate data.

In his free time, Kevin teaches group fitness classes at the YWCA of Minneapolis.

Poornendu

Data Engineer 2

Poornendu joined ISRDI as a Data Engineer in 2021 and since then she has worked on various projects here at ISRDI. She has primarily worked on spatial projects and is a huge database enthusiast. She is highly appreciative of how accomadative the work culture at ISRDI is, especially since she started off as a mom of a 4-month-old and has still been able to manage a full time job and a steady career at ISRDI.

Before working at ISRDI, Poornendu did a graduate program in Data Science from the University of St. Thomas while contracting as a Cyber Security Analyst at Best Buy and TCF bank, learning logging tools like ELK stack and doing trend analysis on Tableau.

Outside of work she is into being a mom to a toddler and Indian classical dance and music. You can catch her at any event hosted by IMSOM (Indian Music Society of Minnesota), attending of course!!!

Riley

Data Engineer 2

Riley started at ISRDI as a junior Data Engineer in 2021. Since then, he has enjoyed working on many of the data-centered projects at ISRDI. He is especially interested in database linking, the open source hlink project, and learning the ins and outs of programming languages like Python and Rust.

Before working at ISRDI, Riley spent a brief time working in the fields of landscaping, distributed computing research, and board game software quality assurance (you read that last one right!). Outside of work, you might find him cooking, hiking, playing board games with friends, or practicing the bass guitar.

Nikita

Data Engineer 2

Nikita started her career as a Software Developer at Oracle in India in 2014. She worked there for over 2 years on distributed computing, engineered systems and server technology.

A spark of interest in baking led her to pursue a Diploma in Patisserie and start her own venture in 2018. After a successful stint at her own venture, following her spouse she landed in the beautiful state of Minnesota in 2020. Nikita joined ISRDI as a Data Engineer in 2021 and works mostly on microdata projects. She appreciates the work culture at ISRDI the most and enjoys everything she gets to learn on the job. Currently, she is venturing into learning Rust which she says has been intimidating so far. But, she knows she will get there sooner or later.

Outside of work, she enjoys baking (no brownie points for guessing that!), cooking, exploring new places in this beautiful city, painting and playing board games with friends.

Ops Team

Willy

Ops Team Manager

Willy started web work while studying studio art at Carleton College. The web was something you could learn the entire body of knowledge in an afternoon at that time. Willy took this love of narrative and storytelling to the new medium and somehow stumbled upon a career. After a decade at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts doing all things web, Willy switched focus to application performance. As the IT Ops Manager at ISRDI, Willy and the team profile and monitor system performance and work with our programmers to find ways to deliver speed and reliability to our users.

In their free time, Willy is a cycling advocate, election judge, outdoorsman, home chef, and enthusiastic diner. Willy’s always happy to talk about bikes, cats, food, cats, internet, cats, and internet optimization.

Li

DevOps Engineer 2

Once upon a time, Li was an auto trader at his hometown in China, then explored his entrepreneurship via a family business in high voltage electrical equipment industry. But none of these opportunities kept him from going back to what he really wants, a career path in IT. A java developer position was his starting point, he then decided to pursue his master’s degree in Information Assurance and got exposed to the world of Containerization and DevOps. Shortly after, he joined ISRDI IT operations team and has been passionate in providing safe, reliable computing environment for our software developers and users.

Aside from work, he still likes to share his enthusiasm in motoring with his friends, enjoys listening to music from Hifiberry, loves road trips and national parks, as well as being a good father, husband and son in his family.