Senior Mentors (Faculty)
Dr. A. Nayena Blankson
Dr. Lisa Dierker
Dr. Lisa Harlow
Dr. Mentewab Ayalew is an Associate Professor of Biology at Spelman College. She obtained her PhD in Plant Cellular and Molecular Biology at the Ecole Nationale Superieure d’Agronomie de Toulouse in France. Since joining the faculty ranks at Spelman she has put considerable emphasis on the integration of research, teaching and student development. She has been leading efforts to infuse quantitative and computational approaches in research and education in Biology, including building the department’s partnership with the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard as well as providing faculty development and support through a series of NSF funded workshops in the area of Biological Big Data. In her research, she uses modeling approaches as well as metagenomics and metatranscriptomic analysis in her quest to understand antibiotic resistance in plants. Dr. Ayalew is also the co-director of the Living and Learning in and Interdisciplinary Community of STEM Scholars (LINCS), a program initiated in fall 2015 to foster the intellectual engagement and provide mentoring and development opportunities to Spelman students aspiring to pursue a STEM PhD or an MD/PhD.
Alexandria Hadd is an assistant professor of psychology at Spelman College in Atlanta, where she teaches courses on statistics and research methods. She earned her PhD in quantitative psychology at Vanderbilt University and her BS in psychology and mathematics from Oglethorpe University. Her research interests include applying modeling techniques to developmental, educational, and environmental psychology questions, with an emphasis on secondary data analysis. She has extensive experience with statistical software, including R, SAS, Mplus, Stata, and (if absolutely necessary) SPSS. Her hobbies include hiking, analog collaging, attending art and music shows, and raising chickens and worms (who are simultaneously pets and dedicated composting team members).
Dr. Bhikhari Tharu is an assistant professor of Mathematics at Spelman College.
Junior Mentor
Kathleen Bostick is a rising third-year biology major at Spelman College. She plans on attending medical school and pursuing a career in cardiothoracic surgery. She has gained research experience on mitochondrial cardiomyocytes with Dr. Garfield Beckford, RNA sequencing data analysis, and the effect of Kanamycin on metal uptake in the plant, Arabidopsis thaliana with Dr. Mentewab Ayalew . She is currently starting research on microbiomes and antibiotic resistance with Dr. Ayalew and Jessica Coates, a graduate student at Emory University. Kathleen’s drive to make a difference in the world extends far beyond medicine. Last spring, Kathleen co-founded a non-profit organization that advocates for anti-racism and anti-bias education in Fairfax County, VA. Her favorite activity other than sleeping is watching “The Office” and “Grey’s Anatomy”.
R Studio Mentors
For the 2021 program, INSPIRE U2 partnered with RStudio, PBC. As part of this partnership, RStudio staff will be providing mentorship to students in the program. Summer 2021 R Studio Mentors are:
Jeff Allen is based in Richardson, TX and is a Director of Engineering at RStudio. His background is in computer science and bioinformatics which is where he first encountered R and the world of data analysis in 2007. He’s been building software tools to support data scientists and statisticians ever since.
Mara Averick is the tidyverse developer advocate at RStudio. She got into R by way of a long-time love for the NBA and (fantasy) basketball. When not catering to the every whim of her dogs, she can be found: perusing weird words; indulging her bibliomania; and/or watching, quantifying, and visualizing Archer.
Mine Çetinkaya-Runde is an Associate Professor of the Practice at the Department of Statistical Science at Duke University and Data Scientist and Professional Educator at RStudio. Mine’s work focuses on innovation in statistics and data science pedagogy, with an emphasis on computing, reproducible research, student-centered learning, and open-source education as well as pedagogical approaches for enhancing retention of women and under-represented minorities in STEM. Mine works on integrating computation into the undergraduate statistics curriculum, using reproducible research methodologies and analysis of real and complex datasets. She also organizes ASA DataFest, an annual two-day competition in which teams of undergraduate students work to reveal insights into a rich and complex dataset. Mine has been working on the OpenIntro project since its founding and as part of this project she co-authored four open-source introductory statistics textbooks (including this one!). She is also the creator and maintainer of datasciencebox.org and she teaches the popular Statistics with R MOOC on Coursera.
Curtis Kephart
Jesse Mostipak
I’m a first-generation college graduate who started their career as a high school science teacher before taking a hard left turn into data science. Over the years I’ve built and led data science teams in the start-up and non-profit spaces, and currently focus on developing data science content that is approachable, engaging, and brings joy to learners.
Edgar Ruiz