Late last year, the Test Pilot team welcomed a new data scientist, Teon Brooks. In this post, Teon talks about some of his recent work and his role with Test Pilot.

How would you describe your role on the Test Pilot team?

I work as the team’s data scientist. I am responsible for providing data insights from our participants’ engagement and interactions to help improve the user experience.

What does a typical day at Mozilla look like for you?

A typical day for me consists of me learning about the new features we are building in Test Pilot and conceptualizing what types of measurements we should have to evaluate the effectiveness of a given product. I also spend my time doing data exploration to better understand how users engage with our products.

Where were you before Mozilla?

I am a cognitive scientist by training; I spent the past decade as an experimental researcher looking at the how the brain processes and understands language. Over the past five years, I have become an open-source developer working on the MNE project, a data analysis and visualization package for time-series brain recording. I first came to the Mozilla Foundation as a “Mofo-er” through its Science Fellowship program where I worked on developing data standards for time-series brain data.

On Test Pilot, what are you most looking forward to and why?

I am excited to see how Test Pilot grows as a platform for testing new ideas for Firefox with users in the loop. We want to empower our users to have control over their experience on the web and Test Pilot allows us to build the tools to help with that.

Tell me something most people at Mozilla don’t know about you.

I am a huge fan of the performing arts, especially dance. Misty Copeland is one of my heroes in the ballet world. I’m not only a fan of dance but I enjoy performing. I competed as an amateur Latin ballroom dancer for six years. In recent years, I have taken up ballet.