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About

I’m Aaron Cochran, the Research Systems Specialist for Oregon Enterprise Data Analytics (OEDA), a shared-services research team within the Office of Performance, Policy and Research (OPPR) at the Oregon Department of Human Services. OEDA is co-funded by the Oregon Health Authority, so our work serves both agencies.

In practice that means I’m part data scientist, part platform administrator. I’m responsible for infrastructure, governance and research tooling: the systems researchers use to do careful work with sensitive data.

What I work on

  • Research platforms. Standing up and governing Posit Team on Snowflake — environments, access, promotion workflows and documentation.
  • Record linkage. Probabilistic matching and identity resolution across agencies, designed so data can be shared without over-sharing.
  • Models in production. Moving models out of notebooks and into versioned, documented APIs with vetiver and plumber.

I work mostly in R (in Positron), with Python alongside, across Snowflake, SQL Server, GitHub, AWS and Azure.

Off the clock

I run tabletop RPGs, self-host the server my group plays on, and write about it here now and then. I’m also an avid PC gamer, hiker, photographer, and worldbuilder, and a very lucky dad.

Elsewhere

Views on this site are my own and not those of my employer.