Roberta De Vito has been a vibrant part of the Data Science Institute faculty since January of 2020 and brought a wealth of expertise in robust statistical modeling of datasets to DSI. While at DSI, Roberta taught DATA 2020: Statistical Learning and mentored 2 graduate students, 2 postdocs, and more than 10 masters students. She also won the American Statistical Association's W.J. Youden Award in Interlaboratory Testing in 2022.
“Roberta created a very welcoming and inclusive group where everyone is encouraged to share thoughts and ideas, and to collaborate together. All of us in the group appreciate her as an academic mentor, always ready to support our research and to give academic advice, but also for her kindness and positivity that gave us new motivation and support in our academic journey. We could see her passion for teaching and mentoring, and she inspired us,” says Dafne Zorzetto, a postdoc in Roberta’s lab.
“Roberta has been a wonderful presence at the institute, and while I wish her all the success in her next chapter, she will be missed by everyone here,” adds Ritambhara Singh, Assistant Professor of Data Science and Computer Science and DSI faculty member.
Roberta will be moving to the Department of Statistics at Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, and we wish her all the best!
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Shekhar Pradhan has been a lecturer at Brown since 2022. He has brought his expertise in natural language processing and machine learning to DSI, teaching DATA 2050: Data Science Practicum, DATA 1080: Large Language Models and Generative AI, DATA 1050: Data Engineering, and DATA 1450: Text Analytics. Shekhar also served as the Director of Research and Industry for the Data Science Master’s program, advising many of our Master’s students on their professional endeavors.
During his time at DSI, Shekhar started the Conversational AI Lab and mentored many undergraduate students on research in conversational AI. His fond memories of DSI include the excesses of pie during DSI annual Pi Day celebrations!
“I am grateful to the DSI for providing me a home for three years and giving me the opportunity to teach courses on large language models and related technologies and providing the funds to engage in research in these areas,” says Shekhar.
After departing Brown, Shekhar will continue his work on generative AI with his current collaborators and will work on his company, Docunexus.
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