Work

Current

Financial Analyst at Northeast Montana Health Services, a two-hospital critical access system on the Fort Peck Reservation. Focus: cost-based reimbursement, EHR integration, and revenue cycle.

PhD student in Industrial & Management Systems Engineering at Montana State, advised by Dr. Bernadette McCrory. Founder & President of Coincident Systems, a systems engineering consultancy and portfolio company of Stelna Ventures. Graduate research engineer at Montana State's BioReD Hub.

Background

A decade building platform architecture for multi-location cannabis retail in Colorado, ending February 2026. The core of that work: a RabbitMQ/AMQP microservices layer coordinating 20+ retail locations, a headless Drupal 9 ecommerce stack with server-rendered HTML caching that held top organic search rankings for years, a Magento 1.x rework powering in-store kiosk cart services, ETL pipelines across 10+ compliance and operational systems, and Cordova/native mobile apps. Team lead for 3 to 5 engineers across domestic and offshore. Separately: ML product recommendations using autoencoder embeddings, pgvector, and Airflow, with OCR over thousands of lab COAs.

Before that, a decade in PHP/LAMP-era web development, including a streaming platform built through its IPO. More recently, a research-engineering platform in Elixir/OTP, event-sourced via Redis Streams, with a discrete-event simulation engine, an MILP routing optimizer built on OR-Tools with Bayesian calibration, an EHR interoperability layer, and HIPAA-compliant crypto-shredding for PHI. Transport optimization work validated against 138,387 Montana EMS incidents: 38 to 66% response-time improvement at sub-2ms solve times.

Languages: PHP (a decade), Elixir/OTP, Python (FastAPI, OR-Tools, data/ML), TypeScript, React, SQL.

Research

Evaluated post-sternotomy recovery protocols at Billings Clinic. Traditional sternal precautions (no lifting over 5 to 10 lbs, restricted arm movement for 8 weeks) have limited evidence and may delay functional recovery. Analyzed baseline outcomes under the legacy protocol to measure the impact of the "Keep Your Move in the Tube" (KYMITT™) approach, which promotes earlier mobilization while maintaining sternal protection.

Developed Python-based automated speech segmentation system for EEG/ERP neuroscience workflows. Statistical analysis and data processing for EEG/ERP research on language impairment in autism and ADHD.

Developing calibrated agent-based simulation methods for rural healthcare systems using synthetic decision agents and Bayesian parameter estimation. Designing public health planning tools that model healthcare access deserts and evaluate resource placement interventions using calibrated agent-based simulation.

Publications

• Poplin, M., Ma, J., Aviles Zuniga, T., Modyanova, N., Johnson, E. A., & McCrory, B. (2025). "Using Electroencephalography to Understand Learning Engagement with User-Centered Human-Computer Interaction in a Multimodal Online Learning Environment." Proceedings of the IISE Annual Conference & Expo 2025.
• Poplin, M., Hughes, M., McCrory, B., & Modyanova, N. (2026). "Achieving Sub-Frame Precision Speech Segmentation Through Computational Multimodal Analysis: Bridging Neuroscience Requirements with Engineering Solutions." IEEE ACDSA 2026.
• Poplin, M., Tafelmeyer, J., Riemann, L.A., Chamberlin, M., & McCrory, B. (2026). "Keep your move in the tube: An evaluation of longitudinal patient outcomes and readiness for change amongst staff." International Symposium on Human Factors and Ergonomics in Health Care, New York, NY. (Abstract accepted)

Education

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