Keynote Speakers
Paula Moraga
Paula Moraga is an assistant professor of statistics at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Her research focuses on the development of statistical methods and computational tools for geospatial data analysis and health surveillance, and the impact of her work has directly informed strategic policy in reducing the burden of diseases such as malaria and cancer in several countries. Paula has worked on the development of several R packages for Bayesian risk modeling, detection of disease clusters, and risk assessment of travel-related spread of disease. She is the author of the book Geospatial Health Data: Modeling and Visualization with R-INLA and Shiny.
Amanda Cox
Amanda Cox is head of special data projects at USAFacts. She was previously the data editor of the New York Times. She joined its graphics department in 2005, making charts and maps for the paper and its website. In 2016, she was named the editor of The Upshot section, which offers an analytical approach to the day’s news. She is a leader in the field of data visualization. Before joining the Times, she worked at the Federal Reserve Board and earned a master’s degree in statistics from the University of Washington.
afrimapr
The afrimapr project supports the development of a community of practice in Africa around map-making in R. Project members do this by developing learning materials, open-source components and community events. The keynote will showcase a medley of experiences from project leaders and community members. afrimapr was created in 2020 by Andy South and Anelda van der Walt with initial funding from the Wellcome Trust Open Research Fund. Andy South is a data scientist based at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. Anelda van der Walt is the founder of Talarify, a consulting company in South Africa, working in open science, reproducible digital and computational research, mentorship, and training.
Julia Silge
Julia Silge is a data scientist and software engineer at RStudio PBC, where she works on open source modeling tools. She holds a PhD in astrophysics and has worked as a data scientist in tech and the nonprofit sector, as well as a technical advisory committee member for the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. She is an author, an international keynote speaker, and a real-world practitioner focusing on data analysis and machine learning practice. Julia loves text analysis, making beautiful charts, and communicating about technical topics with diverse audiences.
Sebastian Meyer
Sebastian Meyer is a statistician and research fellow at the Institute of Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany. He holds a PhD in epidemiology and biostatistics from the University of Zurich and maintains the R package surveillance. He is an editor of the Journal of Statistical Software and the newest member of the R Core Team.
Mine Dogucu
Mine Dogucu is an assistant professor of teaching in the Department of Statistics at the University of California Irvine and an incoming lecturer (teaching) in the Department of Statistical Science at University College London. She is an educator with an interest in statistics and data science education and an applied statistician with experience in educational research. She works towards the goal of making statistics and data science physically and cognitively accessible. She enjoys teaching (with) R. She is the coauthor of the book Bayes Rules! An Introduction to Applied Bayesian Modeling and the accompanying R package bayesrules.