Organization Description

The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, (UTK) is a flagship research institution that serves 23,000+ undergraduate and 6,000+ graduate students. UTK goals include improving retention and graduation rates, increasing engaged scholarship, and expanding student perspectives. UTK is embarking on the development of a new undergraduate program in Data Science, houses several national institutes for STEM, and is a leader in professional development of graduate students.

Participant Biographies

R. Alexander Bentley is Professor of Anthropology at University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Before moving to Tennessee, Bentley spent much of his career in the U.K., at universities in London, Durham and then Bristol. Over the years, Bentley has used computational social science used to test theory in anthropology and otherwise derive meaningful interdisciplinary findings for social sciences. He is interested in Broader applying data science and mathematical modelling to inform public policy and commercial/government communication efforts. In another, separate strand of research, Bentley has used isotopic analysis of prehistoric skeletons to investigate prehistoric human mobility and diet.  

I am Jeneva Clark, a Distinguished Lecturer of Mathematics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. I love designing fun and engaging lessons, teaching undergraduate mathematics, advising future teachers, mentoring future faculty, and implementing professional development for K-12 teachers. My Master's degree is in mathematics, and my Ph.D. is in teacher education with an emphasis in mathematics education. I have served as a QEP Lead Evaluator for Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Committee on Colleges, and I serve as the departmental assessment czar for mathematics at UTK. I also enjoy writing, hiking, and traveling. 

I am Vasileios Maroulas, Professor of Mathematics, and Senior Research Fellow at the US Army Research Lab. My research portfolio is by nature interdisciplinary and focuses on computational mathematics and statistics with applications of their theory in several engineering and scientific problems. I develop mathematical data science methods using statistical learning, Bayesian statistics, computational probability, stochastic modeling, topology and geometry. I am also interested in developing quantum versions of my models. I am deeply grateful and thankful to the AFOSR, ARL, ARO, DOE, NSF, the Simons Foundation, and the Leverhulme Trust Fellowship in the UK, for funding my research. I am the co-Editor-In-Chief of the Foundations of Data Science published by the American Institute of Mathematical Sciences.

I am Nicholas Nagle, an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. I study and teach topics related to quantitative methods and spatial statistics, especially as they relate to government censuses and surveys. My research is at the intersection of statistics, mapping and population geography. Currently, my work is funded by the Sloan Foundation to analyze the effect of differential privacy on the use of Decennial Census data and by the US Forest Service to develop methods for estimating small area forest characteristics. I have previously served as an advisor to the US Census Bureau through the National Academy of Sciences, where I am the lead on Operational Geography Subcommittee on the Standing Committee on Reengineering Census Operations. In my free time, I most enjoy playing the cello and spending time backpacking or discovering engineering with my daughters.