OUR PEOPLE
Academic Credentials
- Ph.D., Cognitive and Information Sciences, University of California, Merced, 2019
Additional Education & Training
- Insight Data Science Fellow, 2019
Professional Honors
- Outstanding Graduating Senior for the College of Arts & Letters, San Diego State University, 2013
Dr. Samuel Spevack is a cognitive scientist, with specialized knowledge in linguistics, visual attention, and cognitive anthropology. His work focuses on the acquisition and analysis of human-center data used to inform product design and algorithm development.
Dr. Spevack has worked extensively with complex research protocols to collect data from diverse participant demographics. He is well-versed in the following areas of data collection and analysis:
- Eye-Tracking & Computer Mouse-Tracking
- Natural Language Processing
- Experimental Design
- Machine Learning & Statistics
- Data Visualizations and Dashboards
- Python, MATLAB, & R
Dr. Spevack is particularly experienced in using natural language processing to extract information from text data. During his doctoral work, for example, he analyzed the text of over two million forum posts in order to predict online user behavior. Outside of human factors, he has applied his data science skills to areas such as energy, biomedicine, and entertainment media.
Dr. Spevack received his Ph.D. in Cognitive and Information Sciences from the University of California Merced. His dissertation focused on examining how variation in human behavior relates to culture, language, personality, and the environment. For example, Dr. Spevack conducted a cross-national eye-tracking study to investigate cultural differences in how individuals from Japan and the U.S. attend to their environment. Dr. Spevack's doctoral work also included the use of computational models to simulate how monolingual and bilingual individuals process language.
