Center for Data Science Faculty
The Center for Data Science aims to create an environment for multidisciplinary collaboration and innovation. The faculty is encouraged to reach out to other faculty with mutual interests and project ideas. You may reach out to the faculty members directly.
Learn about the faculty's research interests and current projects below.
Eric Applegate
Staff Data Scientist, Trimedx
Adjunct Faculty, University of Indianapolis
Interests: predictive modeling, operations research (simulation, optimization)
Background
My industry experience has primarily consisted of statistical analysis, clustering, predictive modeling, and reports/dashboarding. My grad program academic research was focused on multi-objective simulation optimization.
Dr. Hung-Fu (Aaron) Chang
Assistant Professor
R.B. Annis School of Engineering
Interests: big data, intelligent systems, natural language processing, internet of things, software industrialization, software design
Current Projects
Personal health monitoring data analysis
Background
Hung-Fu has more than ten years of software development experience realizing machine learning, big data, the Internet of Things, and recommendation systems. He is interested in processing big data and applying machine learning to support human decision-making.
Dr. Alex J. Nelson
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
Interests: gender & sexuality, sex work, streaming businesses & social media, South Korea & East Asia, intimacy and romantic relationships, qualitative and quantitative analysis, content analysis, virtual ethnography
Current Projects
- Quantitative and qualitative analysis of adult cam models and twitch streamers use of twitter and suspension rates
- Content analysis of gender and love scripts in Korean Television Dramas and ethnographic field research on love, marriage and fertility in South Korea
Background
Dr. Nelson received his PhD from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas where he conducted ethnographic research in South Korea on transformations in romantic relationships, gender relations, and conceptions of romantic love in contemporary South Korea and their implications for Korea’s declining marriage and fertility rates. He has written on the ethnology of love and his work in Korea in the journal, Cross-Cultural Research, and the International Handbook of Love. He is also engaged in interdisciplinary collaborative research projects aimed at understanding contemporary sexual commerce in the United States as forms of erotic entrepreneurship through the Erotic Entrepreneurs Project and Virtual Sexual Economies Project, investigations of the business strategies, legal barriers and social inequalities navigated by providers of escorting and webcam modeling services, respectively. Dr. Nelson offers courses in cultural anthropology on topics of crime and criminalization, romantic relationships, sexuality, and marriage, social stratification (e.g. gender, race & class), human trafficking, and East Asia.
Dr. Quynh-Anh Nguyen
Assistant Professor
Department of Mathematical Sciences
Interests: mathematical/computational neuroscience, nonlinear dynamics, data science in social problems
Current Projects
Intermittent synchronization in gamma rhythms
Background
My research work has been in mathematical/computational neuroscience. I worked on projects in cognitive neuroscience and system neuroscience. Currently, I am studying intermittent synchronization as well as its implication in healthy and diseased brains. Besides the brains, I am interested in exploring how data science and math modeling can be used to understand various social issues, specifically of the Indianapolis area, such as food dessert, eviction crises, gun violence.
Dr. Abigail Richard
Assistant Professor
School of Business
Interests: patent data analysis, mathematical programming, modelling, optimization, simulation
Current Projects
- Using patent data analysis to predict the innovation potential of post-pandemic industry partnerships, and understanding the role of information asymmetry in these alliance formations
- The role of COVID-19 in the development of new partnership trends and networks within the pharmaceutical industry
- Using discrete-event simulation to better serve the health care needs of bottom-of-the-pyramid markets in the development of capital equipment production strategies
Background
Abigail holds a doctoral degree in mathematics from the University of Cincinnati, where she received multiple teaching awards as a graduate student. She has worked on research projects funded by organizations such as the National Science Foundation, the Taft Research Center, and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. Her work has resulted in multiple publications in internationally recognized peer-reviewed journals in both mathematics and business. She greatly enjoys teaching and doing research relevant to data science. She especially enjoys interdisciplinary work, and she is always excited to collaborate.
Dr. Allison Snyder
Assistant Professor of Data Analytics
School of Business
Interests: data analytics, data visualization, and data communication
Current Projects
Empathy in higher education, as well as the role analytics plays in sports
Background
Holds a doctorate degree in Industrial-Organizational Psychology with a minor in Research Methods and Statistics from Saint Louis University. Has extensive experience in both the science and practice of Data Analytics in the government sector (e.g., United States Secret Service, Department of Justice, and United Nations) and other business areas (e.g., Panera Bread, March of Dimes, & Badges for Veterans). Previously, Alli and her team of graduate students were recognized at the multi-stakeholder Forum on Science, Technology, and Innovation for the Sustainable Development Goals Forum at the United Nations Headquarters for developing a data visualization framework for politicians and researchers to further their exploration in armed conflict analysis.
Dr. Steve Spicklemire
Associate Professor
R.B. Annis School of Engineering, and Physics & Earth Space Science
Interests: predictive analytics, high-performance computing, machine learning
Current Projects
Student Success Analytics, Applications of Machine Learning and High-Performance Computing resources to Scientific and Engineering Problems
Background
My background is physics and engineering but I’m very interested in applying machine learning, Bayesian inference, and data science techniques to problems that have not historically taken advantage of these techniques. I’m especially interested in using high-performance computing resources to tackle problems involving either very large data sets or compute-intensive algorithms that would not be practical otherwise.
Dr. Paul Talaga
Associate Professor
R.B. Annis School of Engineering
Interests: machine learning, cloud computing, big data, web security, robotics
Current Projects
- Autonomous navigation
- 3D mapping
- Content-Aware Upscaling of 2D and 3D Data
Background
My background is diverse including artificial intelligence, robotics, cloud computing, and web security. My primary research interest lies in optimizing data locality in large computer and web systems, with recent interests in robot navigation, 3D mapping, and using AI techniques to 'upscale' sensor data for robotics.
Dr. Colleen Wynn
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology
Graduate Director, Master of Arts in Applied Sociology
Co-Director, Community Research Center
Interests: housing, neighborhoods, community, demography, families, race/ethnicity, research methods, research design, community-based research, applied research, scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL), quantitative data analysis
Current Projects
- A community study of the University Heights neighborhood and neighborhood attachment
- Residential segregation by race/ethnicity and family structure;
- The role of empathy in the college classroom
Background
I'm a quantitative sociologist specializing in urban sociology and family demography. I’ve often used Census data and American Housing Survey data (as well as other datasets) to explore residential segregation and housing and neighborhood outcomes. I’ve also worked with community and neighborhood groups to design and give surveys to the populations they serve. Additionally, I have an ongoing cross-disciplinary project exploring the role of empathy in the college classroom. I also frequently embed research into my courses and work with students on research projects. Please feel free to reach out to me to talk about any of these projects, or the datasets I’ve worked with, project development and design, etc.