Meet the Judges of the 2021 Fall Data Challenge: Fight Food Insecurity
October 5, 2021
Get ready for the return of This is Statistics sixth annual Fall Data Challenge! This year’s competition will put students’ data analysis and visualization skills to test as they find ways to “Fight Food Insecurity.” The contest is open for submissions from October 11 to November 7, 2021.
As the contest quickly approaches, here is an introduction to the distinguished panel of statisticians who have volunteered to serve as judges.
Brittany Green, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Information Systems, Analytics & Operations; University of Louisville—College of Business
Dr. Brittany Green has been serving as an Assistant Professor at the University of Louisville—College of Business in the Information Systems, Analytics, and Operations Department since the fall of 2020. She primarily teaches in the MS in business analytics program.
Brittany completed her Ph.D. in Operations, Business Analytics & Information Systems at the University of Cincinnati. She holds a master’s degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh and a master’s degree in Industrial Systems Engineering from Auburn University, as well as a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from Birmingham-Southern College.
Her research focuses on developing flexible methods for high-dimensional, longitudinal data and applying data-driven solutions to applications in health and non-profit operations. She is also interested in algorithmic fairness and responsible AI.
Wendy Martinez, Ph.D.
Director of the Mathematical Statistics Research Center, Bureau of Labor Statistics
Dr. Wendy Martinez has been serving as the director of the Mathematical Statistics Research Center at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for ten years. Prior to this, she served in several research positions throughout the Department of Defense. She held the position of science and technology program officer at the Office of Naval Research, where she established a research portfolio comprised of academia and industry performers developing data science products for the future Navy and Marine Corps. Her areas of interest include computational statistics, exploratory data analysis and text data mining. She is the lead author of three books on MATLAB and statistics.
Wendy was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) in 2006 and is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. She has organized an annual ASA Data Challenge Expo since 2015, and she has served as a judge for several This is Statistics contests.
Pamela McGovern
Quality Management Director, USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service
Pamela McGovern is a Senior Mathematical Statistician and has been serving as the Quality Management Director at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Agricultural Statistics Service since 2012.
Prior to this, she held various statistical methodology positions at the U.S. Census Bureau within the Department of Commerce. Working in the U.S. Federal statistical system, her experience has been focused on survey statistics and methodology for both household and establishment surveys.
Her areas of interest include data collection methods, questionnaire design, statistical survey standards, data quality, measurement error, and machine learning. Pamela earned her Master of Science degree in Statistics from the University of Connecticut and her Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from Fairfield University. She was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) in 2021.
Jamie Perrett, Ph.D.
Small Molecules Computational Life Sciences U.S. Lead, Bayer U.S. – Crop Science
Dr. Jamie Perrett leads Bayer’s U.S. effort and alignment on the global efforts of Bayer’s Computational Life Sciences program in the Small Molecules organization. He works with a team of data scientists, statisticians, application developers, and cloud engineers who enable solutions in support of early discovery chemistry activities using data science, biostatistics, bioinformatics, computational biology, and app development using R and Python.
Jamie developed and taught online statistical methods courses at both Texas A&M University and the University of Colorado. He received his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in Statistics at Brigham Young University and his Ph.D. in Statistics at Kansas State University.
Trena Wilkerson, Ph.D.
President, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM)
Dr. Trena Wilkerson is President of NCTM, an international mathematics education organization with more than 30,000 members. She is also Professor of Mathematics Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in the School of Education at Baylor University. There she teaches both graduate and undergraduate mathematics education courses and conducts professional development and research. She previously was on the faculty of Louisiana State University and taught high school mathematics in Louisiana for 18 years. She has also served on the Association of Mathematics Teachers Educators Board of Directors and in leadership roles in state and local mathematics education professional organizations.
Trena received her Ph.D. in 1994 from the University of Southern Mississippi in Curriculum and Instruction with a focus in mathematics. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from Mississippi College and a Master of Education in mathematics education from Southeastern Louisiana University.
Learn more about this year’s Fall Data Challenge and how to get involved here.
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