About Us

TRACY M. SWEET is an assistant professor of Measurement, Statistics and Evaluation, Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methdology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742; tsweet@umd.edu. Her research interests include education statistics, and in particular, research methodology for large-scale experiments and social network analysis of professional communities.  Dr. Sweet's work on this project has been supported by IES grants #R305B040063 and #R305D120004.  

ANDREW C. THOMAS is a visiting assistant professor in the Statistics Department at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213; acthomas@stat.cmu.edu. In addition to his research on social network analysis, his research interests include statistics in the social and political sciences, sports statistics, and biostatistics.  Dr. Thomas' work on this project has been supported by NSF grant #SES-1229271 and IES grant #R305D120004.

BRIAN W. JUNKER is a professor in the Statistics Department at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213; brian@stat.cmu.edu. His research interests include nonparametric and Bayesian item response theory and unfolding models, hierarchical models for multiple ratings of extended-response test items, psychometric cognitive diagnosis models and predictive modeling of online tutoring systems, multiplerecapture census systems, mixed effects models and sampling weights in large-scale surveys, causal modeling, Markov chain Monte Carlo and other computing and estimation methods, errors in variables, factor analysis and structural equation models in econometrics and psychiatric statistics, statistical analysis of large randomized field trials in education, rating protocols for teacher quality, educational data mining, social network analysis, and grade of membership or latent dirichlet allocation models.  Dr. Junker's work on this project has been supported by NSF grant #SES-1229271 and IES grant #R305D120004.

BEAU DABBS is a graduate student in the Statistics Department at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213; bdabbs@andrew.cmu.edu.  His research interests include assessing network model fit by considering out-of-sample prediction of edge weights and computational methods.  Mr. Dabbs' work on this project has been supported by NSF grant #SES-1229271 and IES grant #R305D120004.

SAMRACHANA ADHIKARI is a graduate student in the Statistics Department at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213; asamrach@andrew.cmu.edu.  She is generally interested in data science for social good, and has worked on large sparse linear systems for predicting Alzheimer's Disease in aging populations, as well as on early code blue prediction using patient medical records.  Her research interests include longitudinal network modeling and computational methods.  Ms. Adhikari's work on this project has been supported by NSF grant #SES-1229271 and IES grant #R305D120004.

MAURICIO SADINLE GARCIA-RUIZ is a graduate student in the Statistics Department at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213; msadinle@andrew.cmu.edu.  His primary research interests involve multiple record linkage for database merging and multiple-recapture census analysis.  In addition he is interested in social network analysis and related topics in the social sciences.