We are thrilled to introduce our 2015 cohort of data science fellows! With diverse research backgrounds and experiences, the new Fellows will complement BIDS founding group in driving data science innovations and enhancing collaborations across UC Berkeley and beyond. Please join us in welcoming them:
Garret Christensen
Research Fellow, Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA)
Garret is in interested in research transparency and reproducibility and questions of causal inference in labor and development economics, particularly with regard to child health and education programs in both developed and developing country settings.
Chihoko Cullens
Assistant Research Physicist, Space Science Laboratory
Chihoko's primary research interest is understanding the atmospheric coupling process between different atmospheric layers and its impact on ozone recovery, climate change, and space weather predictions. She is currently working on understanding how small-scale features in the atmosphere affect the atmospheric coupling process using high-resolution atmospheric simulations as well as observational data.
Cyrus Dioun
Doctoral Candidate, Department of Sociology
Cyrus employs machine learning and computer vision to analyze the nascent multibillion-dollar state-legal cannabis markets in the US. Working with Professor Heather Haveman, Cyrus is examining the relationship between legitimacy and price in both medical and recreational markets.
Dan Hammer
Doctoral Candidate, Environmental Economics
Dan was a 2014 Presidential Innovation Fellow, working with the NASA CTO and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to help build api.nasa.gov, an API inventory for the agency. Previously, Dan was the chief data scientist at the World Resources Institute, where he led the tech team behind Global Forest Watch, which won the 2014 UN Big Data Climate Challenge.
Robert Nadeau
Research Geophysicist, Berkeley Seismological Lab
Robert studies repeating micro-earthquakes (REQs) and non-volcanic tremor (NVT), two recently discovered low-amplitude seismic phenomena that occur in large numbers and have special properties that illuminate deep fault zone and large earthquake processes. His current research is focused on obtaining a larger-scale view of their distribution in space and time along the San Andreas Fault.
Jasmine Nirody
Graduate Student, Biophysics
Jasmine is interested in using simulations and data from single-molecule biophysics experiments to understand molecular motors, such as the bacterial flagellar motor (which allows bacteria to swim) and the Fo motor of ATP synthase (which allows cells to have energy), as well as developing accessible and standardized data analysis tools for the biosciences.
Kellie Ottoboni
Graduate Student, Department of Statistics
Kellie’s research focuses on using robust nonparametric statistics and machine learning to make causal inferences from data in the health and social sciences. In addition to developing new statistical methods and studying their theoretical properties, Kellie writes open source software implementing nonparametric methods in R and Python.
Anthony Suen
Project Program Analyst, Data Science Initiative Project
Anthony co-founded the BIDS Collaborative, which helps students collaborate with non-profits, government, and research institutes to solve challenging real-world issues. Anthony is also a founding board member of Spark Clean Energy, a non-profit that helps run the DOE’s National Cleantech Competitions and the University Cleantech Entrepreneurship Training Program.
