I’ve been collecting and studying mushrooms since I was 10. I’ve taken some college level courses in mycology and general biology, but my degrees are in psychology and computer science. In March 2006 I learned about the web development environment, Ruby on Rails, and realized that I could reasonably quickly implement an on-line shared field journal with it. Working in my spare time I brought the Mushroom Observer website on-line in May 2006 and it has been growing ever since. To date it has been entirely a labor of love done in my limited free time.

In part through the work I did on Mushroom Observer, I am now working at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA as the Director of Biodiversity Informatics for the Encyclopedia of Life.