Nikita Amanna
Nikita Amanna is an M.S. in Data Science student at the University of Virginia and serves as Vice President of the Graduate Data Science Council. She earned a B.S. in Computer Science with a concentration in data science and a minor in math from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 2022. She is passionate about the intersection of healthcare and Data Science, ethics, and equity, amongst other topics.
Navya Annapareddy
Navya studies computer vision solutions to allow infants to receive diagnoses earlier and more accurately. She earned a bachelor's degree in systems engineering and a master's in data science from the University of Virginia and is currently enrolled in UVA's Ph.D. in Data Science program.
May Casterline
May Casterline is a Principal Solutions Architect at NVIDIA in Charlottesville, Virginia. Her research interests include deep learning, novel modeling and visualization techniques for data exploitation, innovative machine learning applications to imagery data, data workflow design, and creative, distributed software solutions to challenging image processing problems. May earned her doctorate and bachelor's degrees. in Imaging Science from the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Mona Chalabi
Mona Chalabi is a data journalist who lives in New York. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, New York Magazine, The Guardian and many more. She has written for radio and TV including NPR, Gimlet, Netflix (The Fix), BBC (Is Britain Racist? Radio 4 and The Frankie Boyle Show) and National Geographic (Star Talk).
Chalabi is also an illustrator whose work has been commended by the Royal Statistical Society and exhibited at several galleries including the Tate, The Design Museum and the House of Illustration. Lastly, she’s a producer and presenter. She’s one half of the team that created the Emmy-nominated video series Vagina Dispatches. And she presented and produced the audio experiment Strange Bird. Before she became a journalist, Chalabi worked with large data sets in jobs at the Bank of England, Transparency International and the International Organization for Migration. She studied International Relations in Paris and studied Arabic in Jordan. Chalabi was born and raised in London.
Kerry Guerrero
Kerry Guerrero has over ten years in the field of data analysis, with six years in data science jobs. She is currently a Distinguished Machine Learning Engineer with Capital One and previously worked as a senior manager in data science for S&P Global Market Intelligence. She builds out well tested, customer-centric, end-to-end machine learning applications. Kerry holds a master's in systems engineering from the University of Virginia and a bachelor's in mathematics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Jerrie Kumalah
Jerrie Kumalah is a data engineer at SeatGeek in Charlottesville, Virginia. She has worked as a Senior Analytics Engineer for Firefly Health and as a data scientist for OpenLattice. She is a self-described data detective with expertise in business intelligence, data science, and analytics engineering. She has a deep passion for democratizing data and empowering new data users. She focus on generating business insights, using statistical methods to build evidence, and translating information into digestible and usable reports and dashboards.
Jerrie holds an MPH in Behavioral Health and Health Education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a bachelor's degree in Health and Societies and African Studies from the University of Pennsylvania.
Amanda Mercier
Amanda Mercier grew up on a farm in Orange County, Virginia. She got her BS in mathematics at the University of Mary Washington and her Master’s in mathematics at Virginia Commonwealth University. She worked most of her career in government service conducting mathematical analyses of weapons systems, gun ballistics, counterterrorism, counterproliferation, and strategic communications. Most recently, she built a team of data scientists and software engineers at Microsoft, focused on solving the nation’s most challenging problems using deep learning applied to unstructured data.
Kelli Palmer
Kelli Palmer is a strategist and practitioner in the fields of learning, inclusion, and sustainability. She is the Chief Diversity Officer at WillowTree, a TELUS International Company. Her background working across business, nonprofit, and education landscapes have made her a multidimensional leader and strategist, who brings together deep expertise with pragmatic, business-minded approaches to proliferating belonging through learning.
Kelli was raised in Montgomery County, Maryland, and attended Elon University, where she earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Elementary Education. A devoted alumna, she is a member of the Board of Trustees. She received her Master’s Degree in Counselor Education from Wake Forest University, and a Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration from the University of Virginia. A lifelong learner, she studied at Oxford University and has earned graduate certificates from Boston College and Harvard University.
Kelli is a proud, long-term resident of Charlottesville, Virginia, where she resides with her husband and their children. She is an active contributor on numerous local and state nonprofit Boards, including the Community Climate Collaborative (C3), Peabody School, Piedmont Virginia Community College Foundation, and the University of Virginia Physicians Group. She has previously served as a member of the Boards of the Heather Heyer Foundations, United Way of Greater Charlottesville, Charlottesville Area Community Foundation, Live Arts, and the Center for Nonprofit Excellence, among many others. In addition to her professional accomplishments, she is a classically trained vocalist and former member of the Washington Opera Company.
Siri Russell
Russell is the Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, a position created to be an integral part of the School’s leadership team and an important advocate for equitable and responsible use of data to serve the common good. She is interested in how data science can empower communities, individuals, and policy-makers to improve outcomes and maximize societal benefits.
Prior to joining UVA, Russell served as the inaugural Director of Equity & Inclusion for Albemarle County since 2018, where she led the creation and implementation of the County’s DEI program and initiatives. revising diversity recruitment strategies to creating a framework for assessing the equity impacts of policies, practices, and legislative actions. She collaborated closely with human resources on harassment and discrimination policies and created an organizational DEI curriculum with an emphasis on workplace application. Russell also serves on the President’s Council on UVA-Community Partnerships Workgroup and was a past lecturer at the UVA School of Architecture.
She holds an MBA, an M.A. in Community and Economic Development, and a B.A. in Sociology. Her work in equity and inclusion has been guided by the wisdom and insight of countless community partners, advocates, and change-makers.
Izzy Shehan
Izzy is a 2022 graduate of the University of Virginia where she majored in math and minored in data science.
Meesun Yang
Meesun is a current student in the Ph.D. in Data Science at UVA. She earned a J.D. in Law from Georgetown University and a B.A. in Psychology from Yale University.