Rosemary Bailey grew up in the countryside northwest of London. In primary school, her classmates mocked her for being good at arithmetic, but her parents told her she should decide for herself who she wanted to be and ignore such comments. She did and earned both her first and second degrees in mathematics from Oxford University. She was president of the British Region of the International Biometric Society from 2000–2002 and is a fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and mathematics and statistics professor at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland.
Additional Features
Call for Papers: Inclusive Statistics Education with Digital Resources
For the 2024 special issue of Statistics Education Research Journal, guest editors are interested in scholarly articles that address the aspects of inclusion and digital resources in statistics education.
Peggy Carr
Peggy Carr and her siblings were among the first African American students to integrate K–12 schools in eastern North Carolina. This challenging period of community growth, identity, and self-reflection inspired her intense interest in equity in education. She began to excel in mathematics and science, which eventually led her to excel at two historically Black universities—North Carolina Central and Howard. The first in her family to earn a PhD, Carr is also the first person of color to hold the prestigious, presidentially appointed position of NCES commissioner.
Ronnie Sebro
Ronnie Sebro grew up in Tobago, a small Caribbean Island, the third of six children. He was the first student from Tobago to receive a National Scholarship in the Sciences from the Government of Trinidad and Tobago. He graduated summa cum laude with a degree in biology and minor in mathematics from Morehouse College. He was also the first student at Morehouse to receive the Howard Hughes Medical Institute predoctoral fellowship. Sebro’s career differs from most statisticians because he decided to go to medical school during graduate school. He spent his junior faculty years at the University of Pennsylvania and joined the Mayo Clinic in December of 2020. Recently, he was promoted to professor of biostatistics and professor of musculoskeletal radiology. He was humbled to learn he is one of a handful of Black male biostatistics professors and simultaneously one of few Black male radiology professors in the United States. This was one of the proudest moments in his life, second only to the birth of his son and marrying his wife.
Andrea Roberson
Born in Brooklyn, Andrea Roberson grew up in the suburbs of Long Island, New York. When she was a child, her father would tell her bedtime fairy tales. Her favorite, the tale of the African Princess of Mapungubwe—who was given the superpower of mathematics—could always compute the right solutions, earning her freedom from any threat. However, undiagnosed autism and ADHD created obstacles to learning and performing in the classroom for Roberson. Achievements in the mathematical sciences seemed an ill-fated dream. This changed when she met Nagambal Shah, who encouraged Roberson to persist. Today, Roberson is a leader in the US Census Bureau’s big data initiative. Her innovative research in artificial intelligence and machine learning keeps the nation as the world’s forerunner in the production of economic statistics.
Stephanie Cook
Stephanie Cook was interested in math and science as a girl, but math did not come easy for her because she has mild dyscalculia—a disability that impairs a person’s ability to learn number-related concepts. Even though it took her longer to do math, however, she excelled at it. Consequently, she went on to earn an MPH and DrPH in sociomedical science at Columbia University with a focus on research methods and statistics. Currently, she is a New York University James Weldon Johnson Professor in the department of social and behavioral sciences and department of biostatistics.
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Knashawn H. Morales
Knashawn H. Morales is one of two daughters born and raised in North Carolina to loving and supportive parents. From an early age, she developed an appreciation for science and public health. Having a mother and father who were trained as a chemist and an architectural engineer, respectively, likely influenced her. After earning her doctorate, Morales became a research scientist at the New England Research Institutes. Within two years, she joined the University of Pennsylvania, where she collaborated with investigators on research focusing on mental health services and behavioral modification interventions for asthma, insomnia, weight management, and HIV/STD risk reduction. She enjoys mentoring students and noted, “I am blessed to have had wonderful mentors along my journey and can only hope to pay it forward by being a positive influence for others.”
Calandra Tate Moore
Calandra Tate Moore was always drawn to the mathematical sciences. She recalls regularly pretending to be a math teacher as a child and 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. Eventually, 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. With more than two decades of experience in academia and the federal government, Moore has conducted research on a wide range of mathematical and statistical applications. Currently, as a technical leader in video, image, speech, and text analytics research for the US Department of Defense, her work focuses on human language technology.
Felicia R. Simpson
Felicia R. Simpson has enjoyed mathematics since she was in elementary school but was inspired to study biostatistics by her mentor, Zephyrinus Okonkwo. She loved the idea of combining mathematics and helping people. She wanted to study biostatistics to understand health disparities from a statistical point of view, especially after losing her mother to a stroke. After earning her PhD in biostatistics, Simpson she started her career at the FDA but transitioned to teaching because she wanted to expose under-represented students to statistics and biostatistics. She is currently an associate professor of statistics and chair in the department of mathematics at Winston-Salem State University.