Data Science World Changers
Faculty, students, and staff across our campus are developing data science tools and using them to make discoveries and solve practical problems. Meet some of them below.
Dan Millimet
Listen as SMU Data Science students Matt Farrow and Megan Ball discuss their findings from an analysis of jury data collected by Dallas District Court Judge Brandon Birmingham. Judge Birmingham was interested in what kinds of jurors are struck by attorneys for the prosecution and defense in criminal cases. He reached out to SMU’s Data Science program for help in making sense of the data, and for making it available to others who might be interested in what it reveals. The students also discuss how to access Birmingham’s jury data repository, available at dallasjurydata.com.
Dan Millimet
Measurement error is an important and often overlooked problem in (causal) data science. Daniel Millimet explains what you have to watch out for if your analysis is based on mismeasured data.
Eric Godat & Rob Kalescky
Dr. Eric Godat and Dr. Rob Kalesky, both of SMU’s Office of Information Technology, were given the job of determining how to schedule classes in available rooms on campus in Fall 2020, while allowing students and faculty to maintain social distancing.
Shen Yin & Sherry Wang
Dr. Shen and Dr. Wang developed a new method to process RNA from tissues that do not have to be kept frozen, making them cheaper and easier to maintain and transport to labs. Their method produces more accurate results about gene expression from the RNA than other methods.