Our Team

Public Editor has been designed and built by a diverse team including journalists, science educators, sociologists, cognitive scientists, librarians, psychologists, software engineers, and even a Nobel Laureate.

Nicholas Brigham Adams, PhD CEO & Co-Founder

Nick Adams is the Co-Founder & CEO of the Goodly Labs, and CEO of Thusly, inc, which provides Public Editor’s underlying TagWorks technology. Nick holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, where he also founded successful data science organizations like the Computational Text Analysis Working Group and Text Across Domains.

Melanie McDougall, MSc. COO & Co-Founder

Melanie McDougall is the Co-Founder and COO of the Goodly Labs. Melanie has scaled several early stage tech companies by building high-performance teams, spearheading new initiatives, and developing relationships with early customers. She has expertise in recruiting, onboarding, product, managing teams, and developing processes to improve systems.

Saul Perlmutter, PhD (Co-Director)

Saul Perlmutter is a 2011 Nobel Laureate, sharing the prize in Physics for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe. He is a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he holds the Franklin W. and Karen Weber Dabby Chair, and a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Wendy Hui Kyong, PhD Chun (Collaborator)

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun is Simon Fraser University's Canada 150 Research Chair in the School of Communication. An inter-disciplinarian as comfortable with Systems Design Engineering and English Literature, Wendy and her team are helping bring measures of ‘authenticity’ into the Public Editor credibility rating system.

Emlen Metz, PhD

Emlen Metz is a postdoctoral scholar who studies the psychology of epistemology: that is, how people form and revise beliefs and think about knowledge and uncertainty. She helped develop our question schemata and is currently developing tools to train new volunteers. She grew up in Berkeley, and is delighted to be back after a decade in Pennsylvania.

Tony Vigorito, PhD

Tony Vigorito is Public Editor’s Director of Communications. He has written three critically-acclaimed novels and is working on a fourth. Tony holds a PhD in Sociology from The Ohio State University, is a Senior Lecturer at Sonoma State University, and is Director of Culture at Boca Code school.

Scott Peterson

Scott Peterson is in the Arts & Humanities Division of the UC Berkeley Library where he is the Head of the Morrison and Graduate Services libraries. He is a member of the Computational Text Analysis Working Group in the D-Lab at UC Berkeley and works with scholars in the digital humanities. Scott has been involved with Public Editor in various roles since its inception.

Ewen Dai

Ewen Dai is the Monitoring and Systems Calibration team lead on the Public Editor project. Outside of Public Editor, she is studying Data Science & Statistics at the University of California, Berkeley. She enjoys reading novels and listening to music in her free time.

Eric Wimsatt

Eric Wimsatt is the Algorithms team lead on the Public Editor project. He is a junior studying computer science at UC Berkeley focusing on designing software for people. In his free time he likes to train for triathlons and go on hikes.

Aditya Ranganathan

Aditya Ranganathan is an interdisciplinary thinker whose passion lies in connecting research with application. A PhD student in Applied Physics, Aditya studies collective behavior at Harvard University. Besides his academic pursuits, Aditya serves on the leadership committee of Public Editor.

Bryant Le

Bryant Le studies computer science at University of California, Berkeley with some industry experience from IBM, LinkedIn, and Microsoft, and he is currently developing the volunteer dashboard for the Public Editor project. In his free time, he likes to design and plate food.

Nancy Wang

Nancy Wang is a second year at the University of California, Berkeley studying Data Science and Economics. Nancy is very interested in participating in Public Editor’s effort to combat news media misinformation. In her free time, she enjoys watching sit-coms and hiking.

Catharine Wu

Catharine Wu joined Public Editor on Jan. 2018, started with leading the scoring algorithm team. She then worked on the training curriculums and project operations. Catharine is a passionate scuba diver.

Ruby Werman

Ruby Werman is a member of the Community team, helping to develop Public Editor's forum. She's a computer science major who's interested in design and tech for social good projects.

Andrew Flury

Andrew Flury is a member of the software team for Public Editor, and is a junior at UC Berkeley. When Andrew isn't coding, he can be found volunteering at Berkeley's thrift store, ReUSE, or playing ukulele on the Glade.