Affiliation: Video, Image, Speech, and Text Analytics Research Lead, Computer and Analytic Sciences, US Department of Defense

Calandra Tate Moore is a native of Zachary, Louisiana, a small town just outside Baton Rouge. From as long as she can remember, she has been drawn to the mathematical sciences. She recalls regularly ‘playing school’ as a child and taking on the role of math teacher, as well as being excited about timed math skills tests. By the time she reached her senior year, she had taken all the mathematics classes available at her high school. Her love for math impelled her to pursue three degrees and spend her career evolving what it means to “do math” and manifesting what you can do with a math degree.

It was in graduate school at the University of Maryland, College Park, when Moore discovered her interest in applied statistics, namely natural language processing. At the time, she was employed by the US Army Research Lab, working on their multilingual computing team and devising techniques for evaluating machine translation systems. After many curious conversations with her professor, eventual doctoral thesis adviser, ASA Fellow, and mathematical statistician Eric Slud, Moore began to steer her studies in the direction of what is now referred to as data science.

Moore has conducted research on a wide range of mathematical and statistical applications. As a technical leader in video, image, speech, and text analytics research for the US Department of Defense, her work currently focuses on human language technology. She provides technical oversight, strategic direction, and mentorship/supervision in key areas of language analytics/technology and artificial intelligence/machine learning.

Moore is proud to not only make impactful technical contributions, but to also transform her technical expertise into leadership, transferring skills to the next generation and creating an ecosystem in which others can grow. She is the past president of her agency’s Women in Math Society, where she internally shaped career development experiences and externally established relationships with diverse colleges across the country to support national efforts to address the under-representation of women in mathematics and statistics. Because she has benefited tremendously from several career-shaping programs and interactions over the years, Moore considers the labor she commits to continued outreach within the community a grounding force.

Moore has served as a commencement speaker for the UCLA Master of Science in Business Analytics program, a panelist for the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining and Data Discovery’s Women in Data Science lunch, a multi-year Advanced Placement Statistics reader, an ASA Council of Sections representative from the Section on Statistics in Defense and National Security, and an executive board member of the Army Conference on Applied Statistics.

When she is not focusing on her professional and community pursuits, Moore enjoys traveling to new areas and exploring state and national parks. Above all, she loves to spend time with her husband and experience the world with their two daughters.