Dr. Ana Lucía Córdova Cazar (Chair), Assistant Professor, School of Business, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador

Ana Lucía Córdova Cazar is a professor at the School of Business at Universidad San Francisco de Quito. She obtained her PhD and Master of Science in the area of Survey Research and Methodology from the University of Nebraska - Lincoln (USA). Additionally, thanks to the Chevening scholarship, she earned a Master of Arts in Political Economy from the University of Essex (United Kingdom).

Her academic interests include survey design and analysis, opinion measurement, applied analysis of social behavior, questionnaire design, multivariate and multilevel statistical analysis, and structural equation modeling. Her research focuses on big data and social sciences, politics, data on the use of time, and the quality of data collected through surveys.

Dr. Trent D. Buskirk, Novak Family Distinguished Professor of Data Science, Bowling Green State University, USA

Trent D. Buskirk, Ph.D.  is the Novak Family Distinguished Professor of Data Science and outgoing Chair of the Applied Statistics and Operations Research Department at Bowling Green State University.  Dr. Buskirk is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and his research interests include big data quality, recruitment methods through social media, the use of big data and machine learning methods for health, social and survey science design and analysis, mobile and smartphone survey designs and in methods for calibrating and weighting nonprobability samples and fairness in AI models and interpretable ML methods.  Recently, Trent served as the President of the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research in 2016, the Conference Chair for AAPOR in 2018 and is currently part of the scientific committee for the BigSurv23 conference.  Trent also serves as an Associate Editor for Methods for the Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology.    When Trent is not geeking out over data science, big data or survey methodology, you can find him playing a competitive game of Pickleball!

Dr. Craig Hill,  Senior Vice President, Social, Statistical, and Environmental Sciences, RTI International, USA

Craig A. Hill has been with RTI International for over 20 years and currently serves as Senior Vice President in RTI International’s Social, Statistical, and Environmental Sciences business unit. 

Prior to joining RTI, Dr. Hill held a variety of roles at NORC at the University of Chicago, including Research Vice President, and at Medrock, Inc. (Boulder, CO), where he was Vice President and Director of Operations.  From 1982 to 1987, he held positions in a variety of academic research and teaching roles.

Dr. Hill received his PhD in quantitative methods from the Political Science department at the University of New Orleans and an MA (1984) from the same institution.  He also holds a BA degree in Political Science from Northern Illinois University (1978).

Dr. Hill’s second book, Big Data Meets Survey Science:  A Collection of Innovative Methods hit print in November 2020.  He also co-edited Social Media, Sociality, and Survey Research (Wiley, 2013), and co-authored two chapters in that book.   His papers have appeared in Evaluation and the Health Professions, Health Affairs, Inquiry, the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Journal of Official Statistics, and Social Science Computer Review, among others.  He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.

Dr. Don Jang, Vice President, Statistics and Data Science, NORC at the University of Chicago, USA

Don has over 25 years of experience managing and directing large-scale national federal statistical projects and methodological research associated with federal statistics programs. Don leads a group of statisticians and data scientists with expertise in design and analytic techniques necessary for social science research. He helped his team establish roles in complex sample designs, experimental and observational study designs, data collection and processing, and statistical inference. In the wake of big data and data analytics, he led his group to augment their roles by expanding modern capabilities in data analytics, advanced statistical computing, Bayesian modeling, data mining, and machine learning. As research embraces more timely and cost-efficient data to include newer research methodologies, such as data analytics and rapid-cycle evaluation, so have the services and resources offered by the Data Science group he leads. His vision to bring data scientific and statistical values to evidence-based social science research and informed decision-making has continued to be realized under his leadership. 

Don is an elected fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA). He served on the ASA board of directors from 2018 to 2020. He served as Chair-elect for the Survey Research Method Section of ASA for the 2024 term to eventually serve as Chair. He also served as President of the Korean International Statistical Society from 2019 to 2020. He was a board member of Hope Nicaragua from 2007 to 2018.

Dr. Stas Kolenikov, Principal Statistician, NORC at the University of Chicago, USA

Stas Kolenikov is Principal Statistician at NORC at the University of Chicago. He works on statistical aspects of survey data collection, including sampling design, weighting, replicate variance estimation, nonsampling error analysis, as well as on data science aspects of data processing and analysis, such as reproducible workflows, version control of statistical code, package management and package development. Prior to joining NORC, Stas had worked at Abt Associates, The World Bank Group, University of Missouri, Columbia, and Centre for Economic and Financial Research (Moscow, Russia). Beyond survey statistics, Stas has published in the areas of structural equation modeling, environmental statistics, and economics of income distribution. Stas has been contributing to organization of all of the previous BigSurv meetings, including BigSurv18 in Barcelona, Spain, and BigSurv20 at Utrecht, Netherlands, held virtually due to COVID.

Dr. Antje Kirchner, Researcher Scientist, Demography and Survey Science, Meta, USA; Adjunct Research Assistant Professor, University of Nebraska - Lincoln, USA

Antje Kirchner holds a PhD in statistics and is an Independent Researcher and an Adjunct Research Assistant Professor at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Her research addresses challenges in survey methodology, including how to reduce nonresponse bias using adaptive/responsive designs and assessing the quality of survey data. 

She is a founding member and co-organizer of the “Big Data Meets Survey Science” conference series and serves/d various professional associations (e.g., AAPOR, ESRA, ASA).

 

Dr. Lilli Japec, Senior Scientific Advisor, Statistics Sweden, Sweden

Lilli Japec, Ph.D. in Statistics, has over 30 years of experience in statistics production, survey methodology and quality management. She has held various positions at Statistics Sweden such as Director of Research and Development and Quality Director. Currently she is Senior Scientific Advisor at Statistics Sweden and Executive Editor in Chief for the Journal of Official Statistics. Dr Japec has authored and co-authored book chapters and research papers on survey quality topics. She is the co-editor of two monographs published by Wiley, “Advances in Telephone Survey Methodology” in 2008 and more recently ”Big Data Meets Survey Science-A Collection of Innovative Methods” in 2021. She has chaired and been member of numerous international task forces e.g., she co-chaired the American Association for Public Opinion Research's (AAPOR) Task Force on Big Data. Dr Japec has served as Scientific Secretary of the International Association of Survey Statistician and as board member of the Swedish Institute for Quality (SIQ). SIQ is the national quality foundation responsible for the Swedish Quality Award. In 2021 Dr Japec was one of the recipients of the AAPOR’s Warren J. Mitofsky Innovators Award.

Dr. Theresa Kim, Health Systems and Pragmatic Clinical Studies Program Officer, Division of Behavioral and Social Research, National Institute on Aging, USA

Theresa Kim, PhD, MS, is a program officer at the National Institute on Aging. She manages a portfolio that specializes in non-pharmacologic clinical trials and health systems research such as NIA-supported survey data research that applies the LINKAGE CMS data user agreement.