Spencer Greenberg
Founder
Spencer is the founder and CEO of Spark Wave, a startup foundry (a.k.a. company builder / startup studio) that creates new software products from scratch, designed to help solve big problems in the world. Spark Wave is home to Clearer Thinking, GuidedTrack, Positly, and several other projects designed to improve the world using social science tools. Spencer has been involved in running more than 100 psychology studies, including studies on habit formation, decision-making, overconfidence, anxiety, fatigue, beliefs, rationality, personality, and many other topics. Additionally, Spencer has a PhD in applied math from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU, with a specialty in machine learning. He also has a bachelor of science degree from Columbia University. Spencer’s previous work includes co-founding Ask A Mathematician / Ask A Physicist in 2009, a site focused on answering people’s philosophical math and physics questions, and co-founding a quantitative investment firm applying machine learning techniques to investing in stocks and ETFs. Spencer’s academic work includes his doctoral thesis: “Machine Learning at Extremes”, as well as published papers including “Donors vastly underestimate differences in charities’ effectiveness” and “Nudging Resisters Toward Change – Self-Persuasion Interventions for Reducing Attitude Certainty”. You can learn more about Spencer here.
Amanda Metskas
Director of Transparent Replications
Amanda’s areas of expertise are social science research and nonprofit management. She has worked as a researcher for Spark Wave since 2017 focusing on studying anxiety. She also worked as a research associate in cognitive psychology at The Ohio State University. Prior to that, Amanda spent nearly a decade as the executive director of Camp Quest, a network of educational summer camps across the United States. She holds an M.A. from The Ohio State University in political science (areas of focus: political psychology, international relations), and a B.A. from Brown University (majors: psychology, international relations). Amanda’s publications include: “Trade-offs in Measuring Identities: A Comparison of Five Approaches” in Measuring Identity: A Guide for Social Scientists (Cambridge University Press, 2009), and Raising Freethinkers: A Practical Guide for Parenting Beyond Belief (AMACOM, 2009).
Clare Harris
Researcher
Clare has an MPhil in computational neuroscience and a Master of Science (Mathematics & Statistics). As an undergraduate, she completed a dual degree in Health Sciences, Medicine, and Surgery. She has experience working as a hospital-based medical doctor, a clinical research medical officer on phase 1 and 2 clinical trials, a neuroscientist, and a contractual researcher for both academic and non-academic organizations. She is now involved with a variety of Spark Wave projects. She helped Spencer and Amanda with naming and establishing Transparent Replications, and ran two of our first replications. One of her contributions to the Transparent Replications project that she is happiest with is the idea of having Transparency Ratings for the studies we replicate. She loves celebrating best practices in open science.
Vanessa Blake
Replication Scholar
Vanessa’s areas of expertise are industrial-organizational psychology, business, human resources, executive coaching, people analytics, and talent management in government and nonprofits. She joined Transparent Replications in 2022. She also has worked as a management consultant specializing in industrial organizational psychology supporting the federal government and nonprofit organizations throughout the country. Before that, Vanessa served as a military All-Source Intelligence Analyst for nearly five years in the United States Army. She holds an M.S. in Industrial Organizational Psychology from Walden University, an M.B.A. from Nova Southeastern University, a Graduate Certificate in Organizational Leadership from Lewis University, a Graduate Certificate in Positive Psychology from the University of Missouri-Columbia, and a B.A. from Georgia Southern University.
Isaac Handley-Miner
Replication Scholar
Isaac is a psychology PhD student at Boston College where he studies how people think about the concept of truth, evaluate the credibility of information sources, and decide what information to trust. He is passionate about open science and interested in metascientific approaches to evaluating the methods and practices common in social science. Before starting his PhD, Isaac received his BA in economics from Hamilton College, engaged in industry and nonprofit work for three years, and served as a lab manager at Stanford University for three years. He joined Transparent Replications in 2023.
Kylie King
Replication Scholar
Dr. Kylie King is the Director of Institutional Effectiveness at SUNY Plattsburgh and a research affiliate with the Center for the Study of Capitalism at Wake Forest University and the Ed Snider Center for Enterprise and Markets at The University of Maryland, College Park. Kylie earned a Ph.D. in Measurement, Statistics, and Evaluation from the University of Maryland, College Park. She also provides consulting services to organizations regarding the measurement of psychological factors in individuals and teams and is involved in multiple research projects to evaluate and enhance the networks and resources available to business owners and entrepreneurs.
