Ian Reynolds
Making the arcane routine
My mother is from the Twin Cities and my father was from Boston. I consider both places my home, and split my first few decades rather evenly between them. I studied computer science and electrical engineering at MIT and I currently live in, yep, Brooklyn.
Currently
- In 2025 Upon the Mirror Sea was longlisted for the Andromeda Award. It is now available to read in its entirety at mirrorsea.xyz.
- As of 2024 I work at Altana as a software engineer.
- Since 2023 I have been serializing a “DMT-core dark academia” science fiction novel called Upon the Mirror Sea. It's about: psychedelic-powered BCI systems, unsurveillance networks, mass delusion events, fighting with your Ph.D advisor, and a secret war with the creatures in the space between our minds. You can read the work in progress now.
- In 2023 I prototyped a wearable assistive device for human echolocation with collaborators at MIT CSAIL and the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute. Our paper on the work was presented at CSUN 2024 and is available here.
- I am a volunteer with the TransitMatters Labs team (I was co-lead from 2021-2023 with Preston Mueller). We build tools to help the public, the press, and policymakers understand the state of Boston's transit system, and how it could be better. Check out the Data Dashboard or the Regional Rail Explorer.
Previously
- From 2019-2023 I was a senior software engineer at the Knowledge Futures Group, building an academic publishing platform called PubPub. I did deep and cross-functional work on content management, in-browser rich text editing, and healthier tools for collaborative knowledge production.
- From 2017-2019 I was a software engineer at Khan Academy, where I worked on onboarding experiences and tools for classrooms.
- From 2016-2019 I occasionally published a blog about transit called Yelling at Trains.
- From 2013-2014 I was an undergraduate researcher at the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab, working on Scratch. Before that, I was a volunteer moderator for the scratch.mit.edu platform.
Variously
- I have an abiding love for the Web as a platform and a gathering place. I am in awe of its dynamic range: simple to complex, frustrating to empowering, coercive to liberating. I expect to hear rumors of its impending demise for the rest of my life.
- I want American cities to be healthier and more affordable to live in. I'm most interested in public transit, but I also love learning about housing policy, social services, urban ecology, and all the other levers we can pull on to make our cities better.
- I am a gradually more avid birdwatcher. I harbor suspicion that the genus Corvidae is secretly the dominant life form on this planet.
- I aim to surprise, delight, and provide for the people around me.