About

I work as a data scientist in the Provost’s organization at Rice University, where I measure, model, and otherwise muck about with data in hopes of improving academic life for our faculty. Not by coincidence, I’m also working on master’s in statistics from Rice.

Occupationally nomadic, I’ve been an academic advisor, grad student in English, and software engineer on an energy trading desk. Research-wise, my buzzwords are Computational Literary Studies, Cultural Analytics, or whatever you might call it when folks use quantitative methods to study literature. For a short and highly readable example of scholarship I enjoy, check out this blog post on the apparent separation between high-brow and popular fiction.

Outside the world of data, I enjoy singing sea shanties, reading fantasy fiction, and designing escape-room-style puzzle games.

If you’d like to say hello, feel free to drop me a line at cody.a.vanzandt@gmail.com.