Jeff has been with us in Complex Systems since 2017 when we moved to our new space in Weiser Hall. He has worked with Complex Systems and Sociology’s Elizabeth Bruch, who served as his dissertation co-chair (with Erin Cech). He also worked as a GSRA, GSI and RA for Prof. Bruch and in the summer of 2019 organized, ran, and taught “UM Big Data Camp”.  As our group returns to the office in the (hopefully) waning pandemic, it will be sad that Jeff will not be among us, but we are so proud of all of his accomplishments and excited to follow his progress as he moves on.

In October of 2021, Jeff was awarded the prestigious James S. McDonnell Foundation Fellowship for the study of Complex Systems (on an interesting side note - he will be part of the last new cohort to receive this funding, as the foundation is changing their philanthropic priorities, while seeing the recent awardees through to the end of their funding terms). Award recipients receive the funding and it goes with them to the academic institution where they make arrangements to study. Readers may recall that we were fortunate when Jean-Gabriel Young chose to bring his James S. McDonnell Foundation Fellowship funds to our Center in 2018 and study with Mark Newman for the funded two years.

Jeff will be a postdoc at the University of Chicago’s Knowledge Lab starting in the fall of 2022, and will retain his position as Associate at Harvard's GenderSci Lab where he has been working remotely since 2021. He successfully defended his dissertation "Establishing Sex: The Scientific Quest to Support a Controversial Binary" in February, and we all refer to him as ‘Doctor Jeff’ now!

While at Michigan, Jeff was part of Sociology, the Population Studies Center (PSC), and Complex Systems. Jeff states that “Sociology gave me a strong disciplinary foundation, and the other two offered key interdisciplinary breadth”. The breadth of Jeff’s work is evident in the diverse venues where his work has been published, including: NeurIPS (conference on Neural Information Processing Systems), Gender & Society, Socius, Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences, and the Journal of Homosexuality.

No doubt Jeff would be in agreement with saying that his academic accomplishments at the University of Michigan, were rivaled in importance by the work he was involved in to improve conditions for people on campus.

Those that know of Jeff are probably most acquainted with the nine months of COVID advocacy work he spearheaded with the Graduate Employees Organization (GEO), of which the September 2020 strike was only a small part (he was featured in many newspapers and radio interviews during this time). More quietly, he also worked with the university and its vendors to help reform the university's sexual assault prevention training, and his peers chose him to receive the Graduate Student Mentor Award for his work revealing the hidden curriculum and pay transparency in Sociology. It is of particular note that our dear Charlie Doering was always supportive of Jeff and reached out directly to ensure that he was aware of this and to ensure he proudly displayed his belonging as a member of Complex Systems. 

Jeff will have his doctorate conferred this Friday, April 29 at the Rackham Graduation Exercises at Hill Auditorium at 10:00 am.

We will miss you so much Jeff!