Michael C. Smith is a Ph.D. candidate in the Systems Engineering department at the George Washington University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science. Michael earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Computer Science department at the Johns Hopkins University, concentrating on natural language processing and machine learning. His past experience includes stints at IBM Global Business Services, IBM Watson, and JHU’s Human Language Technology Center of Excellence. Currently, Michael’s interests lie where public health and text analysis intersect: generating and leveraging big data from social media to further behaviorial epidemiology and the models therein of decision-making under risk.