Speed Mentoring

NC ASA's Speed Mentoring - Wed April 18, 2018 at 5:30
NC ASA is excited to announce our first mentoring event!  We will host a Speed Mentoring session on Wed April 18 in RTP.  Speed Mentoring is a chance to informally and quickly connect with several other professionals in an informal, small group setting over a bite or a beverage. Activities derived from professional mentoring programs will be included.   Mentoring is a great opportunity for networking and professional development, and to learn from others' career choices and paths  Students and postdocs don't always have access to mentors outside of academics, so NC ASA has invited several professionals from industry and government to participate.  Location details TBD.  Interested students and early-career professionals should send a short paragraph of interest, including a brief overview of their background, to Elizabeth at mannshardt@stat.ncsu.edu.  Space is limited so sign up early!

Speed Mentors

Breda Munoz, PhD Statistics - Past NC ASA President

I am a senior Research Statistician at RTI International with more than 15 years of experience. I have served as a statistician task leader for several task order contracts for federal and state government and private companies. As lead statistician, I collaborate with investigators to design data collection approaches, develop appropriate data analysis plans; conduct statistical analysis; oversees the work of junior statisticians, and co-author manuscripts and presentations for the dissemination of results. My currents research areas include quantitative epidemiology (antimicrobial disease and non-communicable disease), spatial epidemiology, applications to environmental statistics, and environmental sampling. www.rti.org

Gabe Farkas, MA

Director of Basketball Analytics – San Antonio Spurs

Enters his tenth season with the Spurs basketball operations department … was promoted to director of basketball analytics in October 2012 after serving two seasons as coordinator of basketball analytics … he began his career with the team as an external statistical consultant in 2007 … oversees all aspects of basketball analytics, supporting the front office, coaching staff, training/performance staff and information systems … provides information and analyses to decision-makers in an actionable format, and advances the use, understanding, and direction of analytics throughout the basketball operations department and its staff … before joining the Silver and Black spent nine years in the pharmaceuticals industry … is a member of the Executive Board of Association for Professional basketball Research (APBR) … earned his master’s in statistics from Columbia University in 2007 and obtained his master’s in engineering from Dartmouth College in 2002 … graduated with a degree in engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 2000 … originally from Chestnut Ridge, New York … he and his wife, Ilene, now reside in Durham, North Carolina … the couple has two boys: Jacob and Alexander.

Kristen Foley, PhD Statistics

Kristen Foley completed her PhD in statistics at NC State University in 2006 under the direction of Montse Fuentes.  She is now a Statistician with the US Environmental Protection Agency’s National Exposure Research Laboratory. She is part of a team at EPA that develops the Community Multiscale Air Quality – or “CMAQ” – modeling system which is used to simulate the air quality impacts of different emission reduction strategies.  Kristen’s research includes development and application of statistical techniques to evaluate output from the numerical model. She also provides statistical consulting to her fellow team members to help them visualize, analyze, and interpret their data. www.epa.gov/cmaq

Rishi Chakraborty, DrPH
Associate Director, DCRI Statistics and Director of Biostatistics, , Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) 


Hrishikesh Chakraborty
Abie Ekangaki
Head, Global Statistical Sciences, Immunology - UCB BioPharma
Abie has over 23 years of experience as a biostatistician and has worked around the globe in multiple roles with international organizations, academia and industry. This includes working at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, as a lecturer at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia and in the pharmaceutical industry in both Australia and the US. He has over 14 years of leadership experience in the pharmaceutical industry. Abie is currently the Head of Statistical Sciences and Innovation for Immunology at UCB BioPharma. Prior to UCB, Abie was Head of North America Biostatistics at Quintiles and before that held several technical and leadership positions over a span of 10 years at Eli Lilly in both Australia and the US. Abie is experienced at leading medium to large teams of biostatisticians and statistical programmers in the pharmaceutical industry across all phases of clinical trials. Among his many responsibilities in leadership, he has either led, overseen or consulted on the implementation of advanced statistical approaches in both trial design and execution, including multicenter mega-trials and seamless phase 2/3 adaptive trials. Abie has worked closely with executive leadership in helping shape organizational strategy and drive organizational growth and employee development. He has built strategic vendor alliances across US, Europe and India and managed operations and business processes to achieve financial business targets. In addition, he has successfully led major corporate-wide process improvement initiatives aimed at enhancing cross-functional operational synergy and at strengthening stakeholder engagement. Abie’s leadership philosophy centers on driving a culture of success through technical excellence, team engagement and accountability, while maintaining focus on the bigger picture.


If you are interested in being a mentor, either in a 1-on-1 capacity or at the April 18th or a future a Speed Mentoring event, please contact Elizabeth at mannshardt@stat.ncsu.edu.
 


We look forward to seeing you at NC ASA's first mentoring event!  You may make a mentoring or professional connection that lasts!