Introducing Data Science Ambassadors 2024 cohort
The Data Science Institute is pleased to announce the selection of five graduate students from various colleges as the new Data Science Ambassadors (DSA) for the upcoming 2024-2025 cohort. These ambassadors have demonstrated expertise, passion, and dedication to the field of data science, and we are confident that they will inspire our community. Please join us in welcoming the new Data Science Ambassadors.
- The DSA in the colleges are resources who can help researchers and educators with:
Data science related questions through consults, training, and/or referrals to the right resource and experts on-campus or online - Developing training or other data literacy programs that are specific to the needs of your discipline/college.
In short, the DSA are champions for data science literacy in your college!
College of Agriculture, Life & Environmental Sciences
Mary Ahern holds a Master of Science in Nutrition and is a Registered Dietitian. She is currently a Nutritional Sciences Ph.D. student under the mentorship of Dr. Sridevi Krishnan. Her research focuses on understanding the dietary, biological, metabolic, and lifestyle differences in individuals with obesity and other chronic conditions. This, understandably, involves a lot of data. Her dissertation work involves integrating all of this data with her expertise in nutritional sciences, biostatistics (her minor), and data science by leveraging machine learning, multivariate modeling, and multi-omic techniques to enhance our understanding of human variability in response to diet. Fun fact- see if you can tell which part of my head shot is AI generated (hint- only half of my hair is from the original photo).
College of Architecture, Planning, and Landscape Architecture
Annalise Hummel, a Tulsa, Oklahoma native, is a student in the College of Architecture, Planning, and Landscape Architecture (CAPLA). While pursuing two concurrent Master's degrees (Landscape Architecture and Real Estate Development), Annalise has fostered an increasing interest in planning and developing built environments that empirically demonstrate economic sustainability, environmental renewal, and social equity. To bolster the strengths and talents of the CAPLA community, Annalise aspires to create a strategic data-driven toolbox that will be accessible to students and faculty to shape built environments more effectively. Outside academic pursuits, Annalise enjoys cooking, hiking, jigsaw puzzles, reading, and video games.
College of Information Science
Deepsana Shahi is a PhD student in the College of Information Science. Her expertise lies at the intersection of physics, coding, and data analysis, which she uses in her current research using machine learning applications to solve physics problems. She primarily programs in Python, but she can also program in C++, Rust, and Mathematica. She believes in fostering interdisciplinary research through collaboration and hopes to help foster that.
College of Nursing
Lee Taylor-Vaughan began his career in healthcare in 1995 in the ER. He has completed EMT (’97), Paramedic (’00), BS (’05), an MSN (’07) in Nursing from Rutgers University, a Juris Doctor from Concord Law School (’17), and is currently working on a Ph.D. in Data and Systems Science at the University of Arizona. Lee’s career has been strongly focused on Emergency and Critical Care as an Acute Care Nurse Practitioner specializing in pre-hospital emergency care, critical care, trauma, and cardiothoracic surgery. He has co-authored two books with Laura Gasparasis Vonfrolio: Critical Care Examination Review and Emergency Nursing Examination Review, with other works in progress. In addition, he provides continuing education and certification review courses to nurses, physicians, and other medical professionals. Lee holds national and international speaking engagements in law, healthcare, and information systems.
College of Humanities
Yuwei Wang is a Ph.D. candidate in Chinese Linguistics, specializing in Corpus Linguistics and Computational Linguistics. She also holds an M.S. in Data Science with a focus on NLP and Management Information Systems. Yuwei's research interests include natural language processing, corpus linguistics, and data-driven analysis. She has expertise in programming with R, Python, and SQL, and is passionate about leveraging these skills to uncover insights and drive innovation in linguistic research and data science.
These ambassadors will be leading various initiatives, including workshops, to foster collaboration and knowledge sharing among students and faculty on campus. We look forward to the incredible contributions they will make in the coming months.
Also, please join us in welcoming Dr. Greg Chism, from the School of Information, as a co-Director of the program. Dr. Chism is a data scientist, educator and behavioral ecologist with a passion for open access data science and democratizing education. As an assistant professor of practice at the University of Arizona iSchool, he develops open-source statistics, data visualization and reproducible research curriculum.
Don’t see your college represented? The next call for nominations opens on March 1, 2025. Please reach out to the Data Science Ambassadors program directors, Jeffrey C. Oliver, Adriana Picoral, and Greg Chism, if your college would like to get involved.