Photo credit: Sven Serneels
The spring meeting of the Colorado-Wyoming Chapter drew more than 40 attendees and included 13 talks by members from industry, academia, and government. The meeting was held at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado. Attendees joined from as far north as Laramie, Wyoming, and as far south as Pueblo, Colorado, 255 miles away.
Kassie Fronczyk, a senior data scientist at Leidos, gave the keynote talk about ensuring predictive models can cross the explainability gap so they are adopted, understood, and trusted by end users. According to Fronczyk, data scientists need to be able to explain what data was used to inform a particular prediction and how to determine if a model is wrong in a production environment. The message is timely as models become more complex, training datasets become larger, and decisions carry greater impact.
Presentations covered traditional statistical topics such as spatial statistics and clinical trials as well as emerging topics including artificial intelligence and reinforcement learning. Students were encouraged to present, and six of the talks were given by students. One of these talks was given by a group of undergraduate students from Metropolitan State University of Denver, who shared their findings from a course project on whether increased colorectal cancer detection rates are due to improved screening or lifestyle changes. The graduate student talks were on topics including advances in extreme value modeling and anomaly detection in deep learning.
A highlight of the spring meeting was the chapter award ceremony. The Maurice Davies Award is given to students for excellence in academics, teaching, or community service; this year, seven awards were given to students from seven universities. The David Young Award, recognizing the best use of statistics in regional science fair projects, was won by a middle school student and a high school student. Finally, a chapter service award went to Kit Kennedy of Metropolitan State University of Denver for her help in planning and running the chapter’s fall meeting. “The winners are impressive students. The awards recognize their achievements and encourage them to stay involved in statistics,” said chapter president Jason Bernstein.
Soutir Bandyopadhyay, director of the data science program and faculty member in the department of applied mathematics and statistics at Colorado School of Mines, reflected on the value of the meeting: “The meeting created an engaging environment for discussing modern statistical and data science challenges and opportunities. I was especially pleased to see Mines serve as the host institution for this event. Hosting meetings like this highlights the growing role of Mines as a hub for interdisciplinary research, statistics, and data science in the Rocky Mountain region, while also providing valuable networking and learning opportunities for students, researchers, and professionals alike.”
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