A researcher. A maker. Always a little curious.
About Me
I’m Ethan O. Kile, a PhD candidate in Human Development and Family Studies at Penn State, focused on quantitative methods. Before Penn State, I earned my BA in psychology at Vermont State University.
My research focuses on modeling substance use craving, a fast-moving, non-stationary, oscillating process that may arise and dissipate suddenly. Half of my research applies new methods to it, from multilevel dynamical systems to natural language processing and computer vision for detecting craving triggers. The other half is pure methods work through simulation studies and package development.
The tools side matters just as much to me. I build data-description standards, automated documentation tools like WearITReadR, and quality-checking pipelines that make research data reproducible and accessible to the people who depend on it. I write a lot of code along the way: 300+ commits on GitHub in the past year.
Outside of research
Outside of Work
When I'm not working I enjoy game development, making music on guitar, and playing soccer.