Matt Mollison, Ph.D.
Matt Mollison
email
matt.mollison [] gmail [] com




About Me

I do data science, machine learning, etc. at Branch International.

I cofounded Ansaro, where I was Chief Data Scientist. Ansaro's mission was to improve all workforce and career decisions with data-driven insights, and we started with hiring. We thought hard about reducing bias in the hiring process, implementing research-based best practices for interviewing, and helping companies choose candidates who would stay longer and perform better. Please check out our blog to learn more about Ansaro and what we worked on.

I was a Data Scientist at Silicon Valley Data Science, a data science and engineering consulting company (acquierd by Apple in 2017). I worked on business problems using a wide array of machine learning techniques for customers across a diverse set of industries.

I have also volunteered and overseen projects that solve problems involving civic issues and open data with the Code For San Francisco Data Science Working Group.

2008–2015
I earned my Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience working in Tim Curran's lab in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder.

2005–2008
I was the lab manager and a research assistant in Michael Kahana's Computational Memory Lab at the University of Pennsylvania. I analyzed electrophysiological brain activity (ERPs and time-frequency oscillations) in relation to behavior in a three-dimensional virtual environment, as well as cognitive function/behavior, particularly in relation to memory.

Research Interests

During graduate school my research interests were related to learning and memory, particularly in describing the neurophysiological activity that manifests in the brain while forming new memories and retrieving them at a later point, with the overarching goal of understanding the cognitive processes involved. My dissertation involved the spacing effect, and examined the similarity of neural activity patterns for spaced vs crammed study events. Some of my work has investigated the retrieval of information from memory, and shows that the recruitment of these memory processes and underlying neural activity depends on the type of information being remembered. More specifically, when we remember environmental stimuli, their physical features influence the involvement of recognition processes. This influence is perhaps related to the way in which the memory is initially encoded, a topic of more recent interest to me.