The Statistics in Action series was created to further expose students to how data and statistics are used in organizations and enable them to interact with local professionals. In the past, seminars have been given by representatives from clinical research organizations, hospitals, advertising agencies, office of the state demographer, e-commerce businesses, and elected city and state officials.
Our Spring 2012 line-up is now complete. Sign-up for each seminar will occur the Wednesday prior to the seminar. Your instructor will have more details. Reservations are on a first-come, first-serve basis. Seating is limited. Registration is restricted to those students in SSC 302, 304, 306, and 318M.
UPDATES:
Ringtail Design is now on April 4th. Signup starts March 28th, 11:00 pm.
The seminar for Ringtail Design has been rescheduled for April 11
The seminar for Bazaarvoice has been set to March 28, 5 pm.
Spring 2012 Schedule
| Speaker | Date | Time | Location |
| Lauren Meyers | January 26 | 5:30 pm | Studio 6A |
| Unique Influence | February 29 | 5:00 pm | NHB 1.720 |
| Texas Dept. of State Health Services | March 7 | 4:30 pm | NHB 1.720 |
| AMD | March 21 | 5:00 pm | NHB 1.720 |
| Bazaarvoice | March 28 | 5:00 pm | NHB 1.720 |
| Ringtail Design | April 4 | 5:00 pm | NHB 1.720 |
Professor Lauren Meyers:
Our first seminar for this Spring will be the division's own director, Professor Lauren Meyers. This first seminar is in conjuction with the taping of Game Changers on the Longhorn Network. The taping will be at Studio 6A in the KLRU studios. Attendees should arrive promptly.
Speakers: Lauren Meyers, Professor, Section of Integrative Biology
Director, Division of Statistics and Scientific Computation
University of Texas at Austin
Professor Meyers studied at Harvard for her undergraduate work and received her PhD from Stanford University. She joined the Univ. of Texas faculty in 2003. Some of her accolades include Samuel Karlin Prize for PhD thesis, Santa Fe Institute postdoctoral fellowship, NSF postdoctoral fellwohip, Austin Business Success center award for technological innovation, and the college of natural science Teaching Excellence award. In 2004, she was named one of MIT Technology Review top 100 global innovators under 35. In 2010 she was awarded the Donald D. Harrington Faculty fellowship.
Professor Meyers' research is in the areas of mathematical biology, epidemiology and evolution. She works with public health agencies throughout the world, including the Texas Department of State Health Services and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to develop effective surveillance and intervention strategies for influenza and other diseases.
The Lauren Ancel Meyers Research Group
Unique Influence:
Mr. Pitylak will speak about the use of statistics in real decision making for internet marketing.
Registration for this seminar is now full.
Speakers: Ryan Pitylak, CEO of Unique Influence
Ryan Pitylak, CEO of Unique Influence, has been in the internet marketing business for over 13 years. During his tenure in the field he has developed expertise across a variety of internet marketing channels, including search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, Facebook advertising, email marketing, affiliate marketing, landing page optimization, and website design. Akin to his broad range of internet marketing skills, Pitylak believes in an approach to internet marketing that takes all potential channels into account when developing a strategy and execution plan.
About Unique Influence:
Unique Influence is a company that helps firms that are under incredible pressure to grow and is led by established entrepreneurs who understand the importance of hitting these goals. As a digital PR and marketing firm, Unique Influence works with its clients to create a plan to grow their business using internet marketing techniques like search engine marketing.
Texas Department of State Health Services:
Registration for this seminar is now full.
Speakers: Thomas Erlinger, MD, MPH, State Epidemiologist
Dr. Thomas (Tate) Erlinger received his medical degree from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and his residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Chicago. After residency, Dr. Erlinger completed a 3-year General Internal Medicine fellowship at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and received a Masterʼs in Public Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Erlinger remained on faculty at Johns Hopkins for an additional 5 years before returning to Texas in 2005. At Hopkins, Dr. Erlinger conducted research in various areas of chronic disease epidemiology and clinical research, including cardiovascular disease, nutrition and obesity. After moving to Texas in 2005, he served in the role of Director of Clinical Research Development for the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) Austin campus until 2007.
From 2007 to 2010, Dr. Erlinger served as the Director of Hospital Epidemiology and Infection Control and the Director of Measurements, Evaluation and Clinical Research for the Seton Family of Hospitals – the leading provider of healthcare services in Central Texas, serving an 11-county population of 1.8 million.
In August 2010, Dr. Erlinger joined the Texas Department of State Health Services and serves as the State Epidemiologist. His current interests include surveillance modeling, advanced analytics, HIT/HIE, quality improvement, health care safety and chronic disease epidemiology. Dr. Erlinger has been an author or co-author of numerous scientific publications.
Texas Department of State Health Services
AMD:
Registration for this seminar is now full. Please send an email to
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
to be put on the waiting list.
Information flyer
During this wide-ranging presentation, William Hogan will discuss:
- his experiences using statistics to solve business problems
- how computational ability has improved in the last 20 years and
- why this is a great time to be learning statistics
Speakers: William Hogan, Senior Manager
William Hogan is a senior manager at Advanced Micro Devices in the Central Demand Planning group. He has a BBA from UMass Amherst in Operations Research and an MBA from UT. He has worked for Advanced Micro devices the last 13 years. Prior to attending UT, he worked at Rand McNally for 5 years.
About AMD:
Advanced Micro Devices manufactures microprocessors and graphics cards, competes with Intel. AMD employs 11,000 people worldwide with annual sales of $6.5 billion.
Bazaarvoice:
Registration for this seminar is now full. Please send an email to
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
to be put on the waiting list.
Information flyer
Speakers: Chris Kerns, Director of Social Analytics
Chris Kerns is the Director of Social Analytics at Bazaarvoice. Chris provides insights for clients on their brand, products, and customers through social and behavioral data analysis, A/B testing, sentiment analysis, user-generated content strategies, ROI strategy/measurement, and text analysis. Prior to Bazaarvoice, Chris led the Digital Analytics team at a Seattle-based interactive agency, and worked as a Sr. Consultant at Accenture. Chris received a Bachelor's degree in Business from Bucknell University, and an MBA from the Foster School of Business at the University of Washington. He lives in Austin, Texas with his wife and two kids.
About Bazaarvoice:
Bazaarvoice's Software as a Service (SaaS) social commerce solutions have powered more than 250 billion customer conversations on brand web sites like Best Buy, Blue Shield of California, Costco, Dell, Macy's, P&G, Panasonic, QVC, and USAA. The company connects organizations to their influencers through a unique network that reaches hundreds of millions of consumers around the globe, enabling authentic customer-powered marketing. Headquartered in Austin, the company has offices in Amsterdam, London, Munich, Paris, Stockholm, and Sydney
Ringtail Design:
Registration for this seminar is now full. Please send an email to
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
to be put on the waiting list.
Information Flyer
Speakers: Jeff Carpenter, MS, CEO of Ringtail Design
Jeff Carpenter studied computer science in college, earning a BS from Trinity University and an MS from Colorado State University. He has over 15 years of software developement experience with CameraMouse, Overwatch Systems, and Ticom Geomatics. In 2008, he founded Ringtail Design and is the current CEO.
About Ringtail Design:
Ringtail Design is an Austin based software company that develops advanced analytical tools for the U.S. Army, DARPA and other government and industry organizations. Ringtail focuses on data visualization and intuitive user interface design in order to help analysis easily uncover trends and anomalies within their data that might otherwise remain hidden. We enjoy the challenge of finding ways to communicate the data's underlying meaning, or what we call, "turning raw data into knowledge".