DCDS Affiliates and Steering Committee
The DCDS Affiliates and Steering Committee help strengthen the center's interdisciplinary and cross-campus mission by bringing together Bucknell faculty and staff who have interest and expertise in data science. Affiliates contribute from their area of specialty into a diverse and collaborative ecosystem that supports the Bucknell community. They serve renewable two-year terms, with a call for new affiliates each fall. The Steering Committee assists with center programming and engagement, maintaining a focus on the broad impact of the center on all Bucknellians. Together, these groups ensure the DCDS remains a dynamic and relevant resource for the entire campus.
Meet the Affiliates
| Name | Data Science Topics | Application Areas | Tools |
| Katie Akateh, Research Data Services Specialist* | Data visualization, finding data, data wrangling, data literacy | U.S. census data, social sciences, healthcare | Excel, Google Sheets, Stata, Datawrapper, SPSS |
| Matt Bailey, Presidential Professor of Analytics & Operations Management* | Data visualization (one-chart takeaways and dashboards), machine learning, simulation, optimization | Healthcare, sports, service and production operations | Python, Excel, Tableau, Looker, Gurobi |
| Peter Brooksbank, Presidential Professor of Mathematics* | Tensors | Networks, quantum computing | GitHub, Julia, Python |
| Claire Cahoon, Data Scientist* | Data literacy, data visualization, data wrangling, text analysis | Python, Google Sheets/Excel, Voyant, Datawrapper | |
| Song Chen, Associate Professor of East Asian Studies | Network analysis, data mining, large language models | History, religious studies, literature | R, Python, UCINET, ArcGIS, Gemini |
| Soundarya Chidambaram, Associate Professor of Political Science | Data visualization, LLMs, machine learning | Public policy, politics | Voyant, R, Stata |
| Elizabeth Durden, Professor of Sociology* | Health inequalities, immigration | SAS, SPSS, R | |
| Janine Glathar, Digital Pedagogy & Scholarship Specialist for GIS and Spatial Thinking | GIScience, map visualizations, spatial analysis, map and storymap apps | Arts and sciences, engineering, management | ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Field Maps, ArcGIS Storymaps, ArcGIS Apps |
| Janani Hariharan, Richard and Yvonne Smith Postdoc to Tenure Track Fellow in Biology | Data visualization, scripting, data transparency | Microbiology, genomics, community ecology | R, nash, Python, iToL |
| Jessen Havill, Professor of Computer Science | Bioinformatics, programming, problem solving | Biology, computer science education | Python, BLAST |
| Kevork Horissian, Chief Analytics Officer* | NLP/text analysis and predictiveperscriptive analytics | Education, marketing, finance | Tableau, excel, Python |
| Diane Jakacki, Digital Scholarship Coordinator* | Data mining, data visualization, linked open usable data, ontology development | Digital humanities, cultural studies, literature, history | TEI-XML, RDF, ArcGIS, Voyant, High Charts |
| Brian King, Associate Professor of Computer Science* | Artificial intelligence, machine learning | Time series, sequential data modeling, forecasting | Python |
| Abigail Kopec, Assistant Professor of Physics & Astronomy | Data visualization, population selection, data quality selection | Rare occurrences, physics | Python, pandas DataFrames, Matplotlib |
| Julie Lee, Assistant Professor of Analytics & Operations Management | Data-driven optimization, machine learning, responsible AI | Healthcare, manufacturing, transportation | Julia, Python, R, SQL |
| Rita Liu, Director of Institutional Research | Data visualization, machine learning, qualitative research, survey | Education, institutional research, student success | Tableau, Python, SPSS, Qualtrics, Excel |
| Karlo Malaga, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering | Signal processing, computational modeling, machine learning, data visualization | Neural engineering, healthcare, medical imaging | MATLAB, Analyze, COMSOL Multiphysics |
| Kelly McConville, Director of the Dominguez Center for Data Science* | Data visualization, survey sampling and estimation, reproducibility | Forestry, education | R |
| Ghislaine McDayter, Associate Provost for Research and Creative Inquiry* | Literature, courtship in the 18th/19th century | History of sexuality, courtship, flirtation, literature, poetry | NGram |
| Jude Okolie, Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering | Deep learning, predictive modeling, feature engineering, model optimization | Process optimization, chemical engineering, sustainability assessment | Streamlit, Python, Matlab, Power BI, Aspen Plus |
| Carrie Pirmann, Social Sciences Librarian | Finding data, data visualization, data literacy, text analysis | U.S. census data, social sciences | ArcGIS Online, DataWrapper, Voyant |
| Kalyan Rallabandi, Assistant Professor of Markets, Innovation & Design | Causal onference, A/B testing and experimental design, Bayesian estimation, structural modeling, machine learning for causal inference, predictive modeling | Digital marketing, marketing research, advertising, consumer behavior, consumer search | R, Tableau, SQL, Python |
| Nawaraj Sharma Paudel, Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics | Causal inference, network analysis – trade and migration, machine learning | Network analysis –trade and migration, regional and urban economics | STATA, R, Python, GIS |
| John Westbrook, David Morton & Leanne Freas Trout Associate Professor of French & Francophone Studies | TEI, network Analysis, Data Visualization | History, cultural studies, French literary studies | Oxygen, Leaf Writer, Voyant, Gephi |
| Joe Wilck, Associate Professor of Practice in Analytics & Operations Management | distributed computing, transformer models, large language models, optimization and simulation | Healthcare, manufacturing, supply chain management | Python, Spark, Hadoop, Hugging Face, SQL |
| Jocelyn Zhao, Institutional Research and Decision Support Analyst | machine learning, data visualization | Education | Python, Tableau, PowerBI, SQL, R |
*Denotes members of the DCDS Steering Committee.