Meet the Team

Aminat Adefolu

Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Statistics, Data Science and Actuary
Central Michigan University

Aminat is currently pursuing her doctoral degree in a field related to applied statistics and data science. Her educational background includes a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and statistics, master’s degree in data analytics, where she developed a strong foundation in programming and data analysis. With a passion for using data to drive social change, she has actively engaged in research projects that involve leveraging data science techniques to address real-world problems.

Brian Leung

Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Political Science
University of Washington

Brian Leung is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington. His research interests include the political economy of industrial policy, supply chain and reshoring in emerging technologies, and violence and repression in authoritarian regimes. He is also interested in a wide range of quantitative methods, particularly causal inference, survey experiments, and quantitative text analysis. Born and raised in Hong Kong, he received his Bachelor of Social Sciences and Bachelor of Laws from the University of Hong Kong in 2017.

Katherine Grisanzio

Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Psychology
Harvard University

Katherine received her B.S. in Psychology from Boston College, then spent four years as a Lab Manager in the Psychiatry Department at Stanford University. Now, she is a PhD student in the Cognition, Brain, & Behavior program with a secondary field in Data Science at Harvard University. Katherine’s research focuses on leveraging behavioral, longitudinal, and neuroimaging techniques to characterize emotional experiences across adolescent development and identify critical brain-behavior relationships during this transitional age period.

Silas Gifford

Masters Student, School of Information
University of California, Berkely

Silas Gifford believes in the transformative power of data science for new fields and applications and is particularly interested in the intersection of the environment, society, and machine learning. Since summer 2021, Silas has been working on a proof of concept project for monitoring seals at Point Reyes National Seashore using deep learning and aerial imagery. Silas is a Golden Bear through and through, having completed an undergraduate degree in Data Science at UC Berkeley and is now working towards a Master of Information and Data Science degree from the School of Information.

Acknowledgements

The fellows thank project lead Erin Trochim, project data scientist Madelyn Gaumer, as well as Anissa Tanweer, Bernease Herman, Dharma Dailey, Jenny Holcomb, Sarah Stone and the rest of the E-Science staff for supporting their work this summer. We also thank the other fellows Kimberly Kreiss, Maia Powell, Aanchal Setia, and Violet Huang for their valuable input. And of course, this project could not have been possible without our project stakeholders and contributors, including Alan Mitchell (Analysis North), Tom Marsik and Phylicia Cicilio (University of Alaska Fairbanks), Andy Romanoff (Alaska Heat Smart), Jimmy Ord and Michael Spencer (Alaska Housing Finance Corporation).