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Education

Ph.D., Physics — Montana State University, Bozeman, MT (2018–2022)
M.S., Physics — Montana State University, Bozeman, MT (2016–2018)
B.S., Physics & Astronomy — Benedictine College, Atchison, KS (2012–2016)

Experience

Solutions Architect, Solutions & Growth — commonFont (Oct 2025–Present)
- Lead Engineering and AWS practices; mentor teammates across Salesforce, application ownership, and cloud architecture
- Architect cloud-native GenAI and data platforms on AWS (Bedrock, RAG, OpenSearch/FAISS, ECS Fargate, CI/CD)
- Establish development standards, SOPs, and security-conscious delivery for enterprise / regulated clients
Business Analyst — commonFont (Jan 2024–Sep 2025)
- Owned Salesforce, Tableau, and AWS data infrastructure (S3, Glue, Athena, Kinesis, SageMaker)
- Built and validated a customer churn model (scikit-learn / TensorFlow / SHAP); presented results internally
Solutions Consultant — commonFont (Dec 2022–Dec 2023)
- Custom data pipelines in Medallia; automated data dictionary / tech-spec generation in Python

Academic & Research

Postdoctoral Researcher — Montana State University (May–Dec 2022)
- Atmospheric time-series analysis with Python/SQL; peer-reviewed publications on TGFs and lightning
Ph.D. Candidate — Montana State University (2016–2022)
- HDBSCAN clustering for thunderstorm patterns; high-speed TGF instrumentation (LAFTR); field deployments

Technical skills

Languages: Python, SQL, R, JavaScript, HTML/CSS, React
AI / GenAI: Amazon Bedrock, RAG, OpenSearch, FAISS, Guardrails, tool calling, LLM evaluation
ML: scikit-learn, TensorFlow, XGBoost, HDBSCAN, SHAP
Cloud: AWS (ECS, IAM, S3, Glue, Athena, Kinesis, SageMaker, Bedrock), Docker, Terraform, CI/CD
Data & platforms: PostgreSQL, ETL pipelines, Tableau, Salesforce, Medallia, Qualtrics

Certifications

AWS Certified AI Practitioner (AIF-C01)
AWS Certified Developer – Associate (DVA-C02)
AWS Certified Generative AI Developer – Professional (AIP-C01) — in progress
Medallia Product Certification – Analyst I
Qualtrics CX Technology Consultant

Publications

The Relationship Between Instantaneous Lightning Flash Rates and TGF Production in Thunderstorms

Larkey, R. K., Sample, J. G., Smith, D. M., Lapierre, J. L., DiGangi, E., & Holzworth, R. H. (2021). "The Relationship Between TGF Production in Thunderstorms and Lightning Flash Rates and Amplitudes" Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 126, e2020JD034401.

Evidence for Extended Charging Periods Prior to Terrestrial Gamma Ray Flashes

Larkey, R. K., Sample, J. G., Smith, D. M., Briggs, M. S., Lapierre, J. L., & Holzworth, R. H. (2019). "Evidence for extended charging periods prior to terrestrial gamma ray flashes" Geophysical Research Letters. 46.