About Me

I’m a neuroscientist researching genetic forms of Parkinson’s Disease at 23andMe. In my first postdoc, I studied multimodal hypersensitivity and pelvic pain. In graduate school, I studied volitional control of semantic processing, executive dysfunction in chronic-phase traumatic brain injury, and human reasoning. My undergraduate work utilized EEG to understand the neural correlates of analogical reasoning. In my spare time I enjoy reading, golfing, and the endless pursuit of new hobbies.

Blog Posts

Parkinson's Disease 101: Environment and Lifestyle

Parkinson's Disease
Parkinsons Foundation
Genetics
Environment
Lifestyle
Pesticides
Traumatic brain injury
Caffeine
Smoking
Science
Learn and donate to a great cause!
`May 6, 2025`{=html}
Matthew J. Kmiecik

Parkinson's Disease 101: Polygenic Risk

Parkinson's Disease
Parkinsons Foundation
Genetics
Polygenic risk
Science
Learn and donate to a great cause!
`Apr 22, 2025`{=html}
Matthew J. Kmiecik

Parkinson's Disease 101: Genetics

Parkinson's Disease
Parkinsons Foundation
Genetics
Science
Learn and donate to a great cause!
`Apr 9, 2025`{=html}
Matthew J. Kmiecik

Parkinson's Disease 101

Parkinson's Disease
Parkinsons Foundation
Genetics
Science
Learn and donate to a great cause!
`Mar 25, 2025`{=html}
Matthew J. Kmiecik

Named vectors in R

R
vector
data visualization
ggplot2
A powerful tool for plotting colors.
Mar 11, 2025
Matthew J. Kmiecik

Why I abandoned bullet journaling

Bullet journaling
Google Sheets
Productivity
Life Hack
Academia
Industry
Science
Don’t underestimate the power of a good to-do list.
Feb 25, 2025
Matthew J. Kmiecik

My first foray into chess - part II

Chess
Club
Hobby
A humbling experience to say the least.
Feb 11, 2025
Matthew J. Kmiecik

My first foray into chess - part I

Chess
Club
Hobby
A humbling experience to say the least.
Jan 28, 2025
Matthew J. Kmiecik

Creating objects in R

R
Programming
Statistics
Data science
Variables
What variable assignment says about my growth in programming.
Jan 14, 2025
Matthew J. Kmiecik

Building keyboards

Hobbyist
Keyboards
Creamy pops
Mechanical keyboard
Technology
A brief meditation about this fascinating hobby.
Dec 24, 2024
Matthew J. Kmiecik

Bullet journaling for perfectionists

Productivity
Life hacks
Bullet journaling
Journaling
Notebooks
Writing
4 tips that helped me get started.
Dec 10, 2024
Matthew J. Kmiecik

My start with R

R
Statistics
Programming
Science
Learning
The programming language that made me a better scientist.
Nov 26, 2024
Matthew J. Kmiecik

Finances in gradschool

Finance
Financial Literacy
Graduate school
Budgeting
Investing
What I would have done differently if I were to enter graduate school tomorrow.
Nov 12, 2024
Matthew J. Kmiecik

Screen Time

Focus
Productivity
iOS
How I used principles from psychology to help increase productivity.
Oct 29, 2024
Matthew J. Kmiecik

Seeing the forest for the trees

Focus
Productivity
Writing
How I use the Forest iOS app to block distractions.
Oct 15, 2024
Matthew J. Kmiecik

My favorite figures (to date)

ggplot2
R
dataviz
publishing
science
Omnigraffle
Blogpost that tells the stories behind the design decisions of my favorite figures.
Oct 1, 2024
Matthew J. Kmiecik

Using Omnigraffle for publication ready figures

ggplot2
Software
Tools
R
dataviz
publishing
science
Omnigraffle
Blogpost explaining my framework for producing publication-ready figures.
Sep 17, 2024
Matthew J. Kmiecik

I started this Substack just so that I could use Ulysses

Writing
Software
Tools
Blogpost on the Ulysses writing software.
Sep 3, 2024
Matthew J. Kmiecik

Stop Using Excel to Preprocess E-Prime Data

Academic
R
E-Prime
A walk-through of how to process E-Prime output with R.
Mar 18, 2020
Matthew J. Kmiecik

My Reads

Academic
R
Reading
Plotly
The results of a 1-year reading experiment.
Dec 26, 2019
Matthew J. Kmiecik

Exploring 11 Years of Chicago Blackhawk’s Data using Principal Components Analysis

Academic
Hockey Analytics
R
Two grad students get over zealous with PCA and NHL data.
Mar 7, 2019
Matthew J. Kmiecik & Ekarin E. Pongpipat

A Method for Characterizing Semantic and Lexical Properties of Sentence Completions in Traumatic Brain Injury

Academic
Paper Review
A (hopefully) accessible summary of my first first-authored paper.
Jul 22, 2018
Matthew J. Kmiecik

Bootstrapping and Permutation Testing: A Shiny App

Academic
Shiny
R
Using Shiny to help understand the difference between bootstrapping and permutation testing.
Jun 7, 2018
Matthew J. Kmiecik & Ekarin E. Pongpipat

Simulating 2018 NCAA March Madness Tournament Performance in R

Academic
R
March Madness
A bunch of grad students compete to design the best March Madness algorithm.
Mar 20, 2018
Nick Ray, David Hoagey, Linh Lazarus, Ekarin Pongpipat, & Matthew J. Kmiecik

Multilevel Modeling in R with NHL Power Play Data

Academic
Hockey Analytics
R
A walkthrough of sequential multilevel modeling in R using NHL data.
Feb 11, 2018
Ekarin Pongpipat & Matthew J. Kmiecik

Writing a Literature Review

Academic
Writing
Tips on writing a literature review.
Sep 25, 2017
Matthew J. Kmiecik

Using Xbox Controllers and Sending EEG Triggers with E-Prime

Academic
E-Prime
EEG
A how-to article for EEG enthusiasts.
Jun 12, 2017
Matthew J. Kmiecik

ggplot2 Histogram Logo Fail

Academic
R
How to insert spaces in-between histogram bars using ggplot2.
May 15, 2017
Matt Kmiecik

The Last Decade: NHL’s Best and Worst Power Play Teams

Academic
Hockey Analytics
R
My initial (although incorrect) attempt at modeling NHL power play data.
May 15, 2017
Matthew J. Kmiecik
No matching items