I am a Senior Research Scientist and Chief of the Geoinformatics Research Division at the Arizona Geological Survey and University of Arizona. My primary interest is the extinction and diversification of marine organisms. Specifically, I study how patterns of marine deposition and erosion controlled fossil biodiversity throughout the history of complex animal life. I also study the phenomena of niche conservatism and biogeographic conservatism in ancient marine biotas, at both regional and global scales. I am currently part of several geoinformatics initiatives - the Macrostrat Database, Paleobiology Database, the Rockd and Flyover Country social media applications, and the GeoDeepDive Library of machine-readable scientific documents - which are all working to increase the accessibility of geoscience data for the scientific community and general public.