rayid ghani

Rayid Ghani is the Director of the Center for Data Science & Public Policy and a Senior Fellow at the Harris School of Public Policy and the Computation Institute at the University of Chicago. Rayid is a reformed computer scientist and wanna-be social scientist, but mostly just wants to increase the use of data-driven approaches in solving large public policy and social challenges. Among other areas, Rayid works with governments and non-profits in policy areas such as health, criminal justice, education, public safety, economic development, and urban infrastructure. Rayid is also passionate about teaching practical data science and started the Eric & Wendy Schmidt Data Science for Social Good Fellowship at UChicago that trains computer scientists, statisticians, and social scientists from around the world to work on data science problems with social impact. Rayid also teaches data science and machine learning class at Harris and is actively involved in the joint Computer Science and Public Policy Masters program at the University of Chicago.

Before joining the University of Chicago, Rayid was the Chief Scientist of the Obama 2012 Election Campaign where he focused on data, analytics, and technology to target and influence voters, donors, and volunteers. Previously, Rayid was a Research Scientist and led the Machine Learning group at Accenture Labs. Rayid did his graduate work in Machine Learning at Carnegie Mellon University and is actively involved in organizing Data Science related conferences and workshops. In his ample free time, Rayid works with non-profits to help them with their data, analytics and digital efforts and strategy.

A longer profile and publications can be found at http://www.rayidghani.com

Frauke Kreuter

Frauke Kreuter is Professor in the Joint Program in Survey Methodology at the University of Maryland, Professor of Methods and Statistics at the University of Mannheim, and head of the statistical methods group at the German Institute for Employment Research in Nuremberg. Previously she held positions in the Department of Statistics at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), and the Department of Statistics at the Ludwig-Maximillian’s University of Munich. Frauke Kreuter serves on several advisory boards for National Statistical Institutes around the world, and within the Federal Statistical System in the United States. She recently served as the co-chair of the Big Data Task force of the American Association for Public Opinion Research. Frauke Kreuter is a Gertrude Cox Award winner, recognizing statisticians in early- to mid-career who have made significant breakthroughs in statistical practice, and an elected a fellow of the American Statistical Association. Her textbooks on Data Analysis Using Stata, and Practical Tools for Designing and Weighting Survey Samples, are used at universities world-wide, and her Massive Open Online Course in Questionnaire Design attracted over 70.000 learners within the first year. Recently Frauke Kreuter launched the international long distance professional education program sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research in Survey and Data Science.

Julia Lane

Julia Lane is a Professor at the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, at the NYU Center for Urban Science and Progress, and a NYU Provostial Fellow for Innovation Analytics.

Previous to this, Julia was a Senior Managing Economist and Institute Fellow at American Institutes for Research. In this role Julia established the Center for Science of Science and Innovation Policy Program, and co-founded the Institute for Research on Innovation and Science (IRIS) at the University of Michigan. Julia has held positions at the National Science Foundation, The Urban Institute, The World Bank, American University and NORC at the University at Chicago. 

In these positions, Julia has led many initiatives, including co-founding the UMETRICS and STAR METRICS programs at the National Science Foundation. She conceptualized and established a data enclave at NORC/University of Chicago. This provides a confidential, protected environment within which authorized researchers canaccess sensitive microdata remotely and provides data producers with a secure disseminationplatform. She also initiated and led the creation and permanent establishment of the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics Program at the U.S. Census Bureau. This program began as a small two year ASA Census Bureau fellowship and evolved into the first large-scale linked employer-employee dataset in the United States. It is now a permanent Census Bureau program with appropriated funds of $11 million per year.

Julia has published over 70 articles in leading economics journals, and authored or edited ten books. She is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a fellow of the American Statistical Assocation.  She has been the recipient of over $50 million in grants; from foundations such as the National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the National Institutes of Health; from government agencies such as the Departments of Commerce, Labor, and Health and Human Services in the U.S., the ESRC in the U.K., and the Department of Labour and Statistics New Zealand in New Zealand, as well as from international organizations such as the World Bank. Julia is the recipient of the 2014 Julius Shiskin award and the 2014 Roger Herriot award.

Julia received her PhD in Economics and Master's in Statistics from the University of Missouri.

jonathan morgan

In his position as Senior Research Scientist, Jon works with the CUSP Data Facility team and their collaborators on the Census Bureau Prototype Data Facility project. He also works with the Data Facility team to design and implement secure, reliable and scalable software services in addition to enhancing the full software development life cycle.

Prior to joining CUSP, Jon was a Systems Architect at NIE Online Inc. and a Systems Integration Manager at IData Inc. where he served as a systems architect, designer and technical team lead for complex higher education system integration projects. Jon has also worked as an instructor at Michigan State University and as a Technology and Process Consultant for nationwide news organizations.

Jon has a Master of Arts in Journalism degree from New York University and is in the process of completing his PhD studies at Michigan State University (MSU) as a University Enrichment Fellow, which is MSU’s most prestigious graduate fellowship. In addition to his vast technical experience and programming skills, Jon continues to teach on varied class topics such as scalable computational science and journalism history.

alex engler

Alex Engler is a data scientist working to apply statistical methods, data visualizations, and big-data analytics for public policy research. He developed Urban Institute's approach to massive data statistical analysis and is a principal investigator on a grant to improve on and disseminate that approach to other social scientists. In addition, he acts as the statistical and computational lead on an ambitious endeavor to generate synthetic administrative datasets. 

Outside his role at the Urban Institute, Engler teaches courses on data visualization and data science in public policy at Johns Hopkins University and Georgetown University. He recently developed and enacted a new graduate degree program in Data Science and Public Policy at Georgetown University.

Daniela Hochfellner

Daniela Hochfellner is a Senior Research Scientist and Research Assistant Professor at at the NYU Center for Urban Science and Progress. She also is an Adjunct Research Assistant Professor at the Institute for Social Research, Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan. Previous to this, Daniela was a Research Investigator at the Institute for Social Research, Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan and a Researcher at the Research Data Centre at the Institute for Employment Research in Nuremberg, Germany. She received her PhD in Sociology from the University of Bamberg (in Germany). 

Her research addresses the economics of labor markets, migration, aging and health and ethics in human subject research. Daniela pursues research on labor market participation of older workers, and effects of social security reforms on retirement transition and health outcomes. Her work on research ethics addresses data confidentiality and methods of protecting privacy in the presence of an increasing demand of “big data” in social sciences.

She has worked with survey data, administrative data, and big-data and has a deep knowledge and extensive experience in linkages of social security records, administrative information and survey data. She implements statistically grounded approaches to data integration, data use and dissemination of policies and procedures.