Colleen Callahan is the 2021 residential recipient for the Wood Family Outstanding Student in Data Science Awards.
Callahan began the residential M.S. in Data Science program in the summer of 2020. Colleen has brought enthusiasm, dedication, creativity, and leadership to her cohort. Her professors and classmates noted Colleen’s strong quantitative skills and passion for problem solving. Colleen asks thoughtful and challenging questions and is always excited to learn more. This is evident in her pursuit of an independent study this semester. Colleen Callahan and Tyler Manderfield, both M.S. in Data Science students, worked with Stefan Bekiranov, Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, as a part of an independent study researching machine learning methods to classify the number of metastatic lymph nodes in melanoma patients.
“Colleen fully embodies the mission and spirit of the School of Data Science," said Patti Edson, Director of Admissions and Financial Aid. "She wants to solve complex problems vexing the healthcare system and be a part of something bigger than herself. Her actions are guided by a high standard of integrity. As an ambassador of the SDS program, Colleen devoted time and energy to nurturing prospective female students interested in the field. Her leadership speaks to her unselfish commitment to building a diverse community of data science scholars.”
Bekiranov applauded Callahan's work ethic and dedication in the independent study she completed with Manderfield.
“Colleen and Tyler worked on developing and accessing various machine learning methods including deep neural network, random forest and penalized logistic regression to classify melanoma patients as having one or more than one metastatic lymph node from patient tumor gene expression profile and clinical data used as input. Identifying patients with one metastatic lymph node could spare them an overly aggressive surgery," Bekiranov explained. "Colleen went well above expectations and immediately started assessing various machine learning models within a few weeks after we introduced ourselves. She comprehensively explored each model's performance using a variety of hyperparameters as well as rigorously comparing performance across models. She did a great job of summarizing and presenting her results every week that we met. Colleen and Tyler ultimately found that a ridge logistic regression model worked best and left us with a model with relatively high predictive accuracy at classifying melanoma patients. She also supplied our team with easy to read, well documented code for future exploration and development. We met weekly on Thursday mornings and Friday afternoons with a larger group of physician-scientists. She always greeted everyone with a big smile. Along with being a great data scientist, she was very curious and interested in learning about the molecular biology and clinical background relevant to the project. She was a fantastic team player and worked well with Tyler as well as the rest of the team. She will be missed, but I'm sure she will go on to do great things in her career and life.”
One of Callahan's classmates and group project partners, Jordan Machita (M.S. in Data Science 2021) commented on what it was like working with her and her path to data science.
“She transferred to UVA as a third year from Davidson College in North Carolina. She quickly fell in love with Charlottesville and became involved in the UVA Jazz Community," Machita said. "Colleen is a Jazz singer and was a member of a Jazz quartet. She had an influential professor in the School of Data Science named Abby Flower, who encouraged her to join the MSDS program. Colleen took a year off in between to work for Merkle, a marketing firm with a large presence in Charlottesville. Colleen is an extremely organized student and often ahead of the workload. She is a dedicated and helpful friend and colleague, always willing to stay on to help classmates with projects and class content.”
"Colleen is a delight to work with," said classmate Clair McLafferty. "She is tenacious, curious, and hard working, and I can't wait to see how she succeeds in her career."