Affiliation: RAND Corporation

Educational Background: BS, Mathematical Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara; PhD, Statistics, University of California, Santa Cruz; Postdoc, Statistics, Duke University

Maria DeYoreo was born in January of 1987 during a winter storm in Maine. Her father stayed home to finish the house he and her mother were building so it would have heat when they brought her home from the hospital. When she was two, the family swapped snow for sun and moved to the Bay Area. This is where her love of swimming, running, the outdoors, and, of course, mathematics developed.

DeYoreo went to college at the University of California at Santa Barbara and majored in mathematics, but she knew statistics was the field for her when she took her first applied statistics course using R. She is proud of her work as a professional statistician at RAND Corporation, where she uses statistical methods to inform public policy related to health and health care.

Some of DeYoreo’s greatest professional achievements have been winning the Savage Award for best PhD dissertation in Bayesian methodology and her ongoing work to ensure high-quality and equitable health care for patients, specifically those in hospices and Medicare Advantage plans. She counts her two children (almost 2 and 4) and recent running personal record (1:35 half marathon) as her greatest personal achievements.