Stats + Stories

Nicole Lazar is Professor of Statistics at the University of Georgia. After receiving her BA in Statistics and Psychology from Tel Aviv University, she served three years as Statistics Officer in the Israel Defense Forces Department of Behavioral Sciences. She then moved to the US for graduate school, obtaining her MS in Statistics from Stanford University and Ph.D. in Statistics from The University of Chicago. She was Associate Professor of Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University before joining the Department of Statistics, University of Georgia.

Tommy Wright, statistician in the US Census Center for Statistical Research and Methodology, joined the Stats+Stories regulars (original host Bob Long) to discuss what the US Census Bureau does and why it is important. (The Census data visualization library is a treat and should be explored by anyone with an interest in viewing characteristics of the US.)

Dr. Scott Evans is a tenured Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and the Director of the George Washington Biostatistics Center. He is the author of more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and three textbooks on clinical trials including Fundamentals for New Clinical Trialists. His other positions include the Director of the Statistical and Data Management Center (SDMC) for the Antibacterial Resistance Leadership Group (ARLG), a collaborative clinical research network that prioritizes, designs, and executes clinical research to reduce the public health threat of antibacterial resistance as well as the Editor-in-Chief of CHANCE and Statistical Communications in Infectious Diseases (SCID) magazines.

Karen Bandeen-Roche, PhD is a statistician / gerontologist who currently chairs the Department of Biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her statistical specialty areas of research are in latent variable and multivariate outcome modeling. Her gerontologic research aims to better understand the causes and course of physical disability, cognitive decline, and frailty in older adults, so that their adverse implications can be delayed or avoided. She is an ASA Fellow and a Marvin Zelen Leadership in Statistical Science Award winner, and she has contributed extensive service to promote the statistical profession through leadership in scientific review panels and our professional societies.

We have reached episode 100 of Stats + Stories and therefore we felt like it would be a good time to have John Bailer, Richard Campbell and Rosemary Pennington sit around and talk about what all has brought us here and what more to expect in the future.

Dr. Caitlin Kontgis is a technical lead on the Applied Science team at Descartes Labs and was honored at the New Mexico Tech Council’s Women in Tech celebration in March 2018. Prior to moving to New Mexico in early 2016 to join the Descartes Labs team, she earned her PhD in Geography from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where her research was funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation to study land cover change and climate change effects on the Mekong River Delta region of Vietnam. Since moving to Santa Fe, Caitlin began volunteering at the local Girls Inc chapter and joined the board in fall of 2017. She is passionate about supporting women in STEM fields and scientific literacy. When not at work, you can find Caitlin running, skiing, and hiking the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

Dr. Alicia Carriquiry is a Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences and a Professor of Statistics at Iowa State University. She serves as Director and lead investigator for the Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence. The NIST Center of Excellence’s mission is to increase the scientific rigor of forensic science through improved statistical applications. Dr. Carriquiry provides scientific oversight and research expertise to the center. She participates in the Organization of Scientific Area Committees subcommittee on Materials and Trace Evidence and serves as a technical advisor for the Association of Firearms and Tool Mark Examiners. Dr. Carriquiry was recently named to the National Academy of Medicine and elected as a fellow to the American Associations for the Advancement of Science.

Richard Harris has covered science, medicine and the environment for National Public Radio since 1986. He has traveled the world, from the South Pole and the Great Barrier Reef to the Arctic Ocean, reporting on climate change. The American Geophysical Union honored him with a Presidential Citation for Science and Society. In 2014, he turned his attention back to biomedical research and came to realize how the field was suffering. Too many scientists were chasing too little funding. That led him to take a year-long sabbatical at Arizona State University’s Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes to research and write Rigor Mortis.

Dr. Steven Lloyd Wilson is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Nevada, Reno. He earned his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2016, and serves as the Project Manager of Computational Infrastructure for the Varieties of Democracy Institute at the University of Gothenburg. His research focuses on comparative democratization, cyber-security, and the effect of the Internet on authoritarian regimes. He also works on a variety of projects involving network and content analysis of social media around the world.

Dr. Sara Cobb has a Ph.D. in Communication (UMASS Amherst) and is the Drucie French Cumbie Chair at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (S-CAR) at George Mason University, where she was, from 2001-2009, the dean/director. In her current role as faculty she teaches and conducts research on the relationship between narrative and conflict. She is also the Director of the Center for the Study of Narrative and Conflict Resolution at S-CAR, which provides a hub for scholarship on narrative approaches to conflict analysis and resolution. She is co-editor of the journal Narrative and Conflict: Explorations in Theory and Practice