Jed Brubaker is a Ph.D. candidate in informatics at UC Irvine, where he takes a human-centered approach to studying how individuals are represented in large technological systems and datasets. Over the past four years, Brubaker has studied the challenges and opportunities social media platforms present following the death of account holders. He has documented ways that social media platforms are changing our experiences of death and memorialization, demonstrated limitations of current social media platforms, and worked to improve the ability of technological systems to support the entirety of our lives — including when those lives come to an end. Brubaker previously earned his M.A. at Georgetown University in communication, culture, and technology, and his B.S. at the University of Utah in psychology.