Program Committee
Carlos Freitas Almeida
Carlos Freitas Almeida is a graduate student in Psychology at Penn State.
Carrie Brown
Carrie Brown is Client Support Lead with the Institute for Computational & Data Science (ICDS).
carrie.brown@psu.edu
Bruce Desmarais
Bruce Desmarais is the DeGrandis-McCourtney Early Career Professor in Political Science, Director of the Center for Social Data Analytics, and a co-hire of the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences at Penn State University. His research is focused on methodological development and applications that further our understanding of the complex interdependence that underlies politics and public policy. Methodologically, he focuses on methods for modeling networks, analyzing text, and running experiments on social systems. Primary application areas of interest to Bruce include public policy diffusion and digital communications involving political elites.
bdesmarais@psu.edu
Ana Enriquez
Ana Enriquez is the Copyright Officer and Head of the Office of Scholarly Communications and Copyright at the Penn State University Libraries. A copyright lawyer by training, she teaches the university community about copyright and publishing, assists researchers in making their work freely available to the public, and supports the Libraries’ negotiations with publishers. Her research focuses on copyright, teaching copyright, and leveraging library expertise to advance the open access movement.
aee32@psu.edu
Frank Hillary
Frank G. Hillary is a Professor of Psychology and Neurology at Penn State. His research examines the influence of brain injury and disease on functional brain organization over the lifespan. To do so, he incorporates cognitive testing, structural and functional MRI, and network neuroscience approaches (e.g., graph theory) in his work. There is a critical need in the neuroimaging literature for open code and data sharing and convergence on accepted methods to increase scientific reliability. Because of this, over the past 5 years Dr. Hillary’s work has shifted to focus on the reproducibility of neuroimaging work in the study of brain disorders. He is the leader of an international working group, ENIGMA Brain Injury (see: https://enigma.ini.usc.edu/ongoing/enigma-tbi/), focused on genetics and neuroimaging data sharing and reproducible science.
fgh3@psu.edu
Zülal İşcanoğlu
Zülal İşcanoğlu is a postdoctoral researcher with the Development, Risk, and Resilience Lab at Penn State.
zmi5020@psu.edu
Nicole Lazar
Nicole Lazar is Professor and Head of the Department of Statistics at Penn State. Her research interests include the foundations of statistical inference and the analysis of functional neuroimaging data. In particular, she has worked on fundamental inferential topics such as model selection, multiple testing problems, and likelihood theory, specifically in the context of modern large-scale data analysis problems. She has done pioneering work on the statistical analysis of cognitive neuroscience data, with a focus on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Most recently, Lazar has been involved in the application of topological data analysis methods to scientific questions of interest in psychology and climatology. These techniques are at the interface of statistics, mathematics, and computer science, and exemplify her cross-disciplinary approach to research. Lazar is the author of the book The Statistical Analysis of Functional MRI Data published by Springer. Nicole is the Open Science Liaison for the NSF-funded National Synthesis Center for Emergence in the Molecular and Cellular Sciences (NCEMS), based at Penn State.
nfl5182@psu.edu
Valerie Li
Valerie Li is a graduate student in Political Science and Social Data Analytics at Penn State University. Her major area of study is Comparative Politics, with a minor area of study in Methodology. She received her B.A. in Political Science from McGill University. Her research interests are contentious politics and authoritarian politics.
Sarah Rajtmajer
Sarah Rajtmajer is Associate Professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State University and core faculty at Penn State’s Rock Ethics Institute. Her work leverages machine learning and mathematical modeling to understand trust and confidence in information.
smr48@psu.edu
Jennifer Valcin
Jennifer Valcin is a Statistical Data Analyst at the Penn State University Libraries. Dr. Valcin conducts individual consultations, workshops, and small group trainings to support researchers in the PSU community with data analysis planning and quantitative statistical methods using various software. Prior to joining Penn State University Libraries, she received her Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences with a focus in Genetics, Genomics, and Bioinformatics from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
jpv5319@psu.edu
John West
John West is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Psychology.
johnwest@psu.edu
Briana Wham
Briana Ezray Wham is Research Data Librarian – STEM at the Penn State University Libraries. Dr. Wham conducts data management plan reviews and provides guidance, training, and consulting services for data management planning, active data management, reproducible research workflows using R, data visualization, data publication, as well as ORCiD integration and utility. She also works as one of the data curators for ScholarSphere, Penn State’s institutional repository. Prior to joining Penn State University Libraries, Briana received her Ph.D. in Entomology from Penn State, where she studied aspects of ecology, evolution, and conservation of bee communities. Briana’s interests include open science, museum collection digitization, and bee conservation.
bde125@psu.edu