useR!

Kelly Bodwin is an Associate Professor of Statistics and Data Science at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, CA. She primarily teaches courses in statistical computing, data science, and predictive modeling. All her courses involve elements of programming – typically in R, with a focus on the tidyverse, but she is reluctantly learning to embrace a little python in her life.

Kelly’s research includes applied statistics projects in many fields such as digital humanities, biology, education; as well as open-source software development. She is an author of multiple R packages including {flair}, {tidyclust}, {shindig}, and {templar}. She leads the Central Coast R Users group, and she is currently part of a major NSF-funded venture to expand the {data.table} package community and ecosystem. Find her on Bluesky or Mastodon (@kellybodwin) or say hello in person!

Torsten Hothorn is Professor of Biostatistics ad personam at the Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Prevention Institute of the University of Zurich.

He received a Diploma in Statistics from the University of Dortmund in 2000 and a Dr. rerum naturalium in 2003 from the same university. From 2000 to 2007 he worked as a PhD student and later as PostDoc and lecturer at the Institute for Medical Informatics, Biometry, and Epidemiology of the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg. In 2007 he accepted a position as Professor of Biostatistics at the Department of Statistics of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich. Since April 2013 he is faculty member of the Medical Faculty and the Faculty of Science of the University of Zurich. Torsten Hothorn is ordinary member of the R Foundation for Statistical Computing since 2014 and elected member of the Academia Europaea since 2022. Currently, he serves as co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Statistical Software and as Associate Editor of Statistical Methods in Medical Research.

Maëlle Salmon, with a PhD in statistics, is a Research Software Engineer and blogger. At rOpenSci, she maintains the guide “rOpenSci Packages: Development, Maintenance, and Peer Review,” and has developed the babeldown and babelquarto packages for multilingual documents. At cynkra, she contributes to the fledge and igraph packages. Maëlle is also the co-author of the book “HTTP testing in R” with Scott Chamberlain and manages the R-hub blog. Additionally, she regularly contracts with various organizations, including research institutions, for R package development. Maëlle is a member of the R-Ladies Global team.

Photo by Julie Noury Soyer

Kurt Hornik was born and raised in Austria, and holds a PhD in applied mathematics from Technische Universität Wien. Since 2003 he is professor of statistics and mathematics at Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien, where he currently also serves as chair of the Department of Finance, Accounting and Statistics, and program director of the highly ranked master’s program in Quantitative Finance. He has been an R Core member for more than 30 years, and among the principal architects and maintainers of CRAN for more than 25 years. His main research area is modern computational statistics, with pillars in statistical and machine learning, statistical computing and graphics, and stochastic modeling (“applied statistics”).

Abhishek Ulayil is a software developer and aspiring actuary, currently pursuing in actuarial science studies at the Institute of Actuaries of India. With a strong commitment to open source contributions, he has released numerous packages in both Python and R.

Over the past two years, he has been actively involved with the R journal through the Google Summer of Code program, where he introduced packages like texor and rebib. His initiatives played a pivotal role in transitioning legacy R journal articles to a web-based format, enhancing their accessibility.

Dr. Hilary Parker is an independent consultant and coach based in San Francisco, often referred to as the heart of “Cerebral Valley” for its rich concentration of tech and AI research. With a career that includes pivotal roles at Stitch Fix, Etsy, and the 2020 Biden for President Campaign, Hilary has become a leading voice in data science and generative AI. Alongside her professional endeavors, she has co-hosted the popular data science podcast “Not So Standard Deviations” since 2015, where she demystifies the challenges data scientists face, from analytical design to client management to brewing the perfect cup of coffee.

Hilary’s approach is hands-on, tackling the practical challenges that individuals and organizations encounter as they harness data. This includes crafting new user experiences that generate valuable data pipelines for algorithmic use and broadening the application of generative AI to solve a diverse array of problems. Through her podcast, Hilary offers insights into the real-world issues of data science, combining expertise with accessibility and levity.

Hilary earned her Ph.D. in Biostatistics in 2016 from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, under the guidance of Jeff Leek. When not immersed in data, she enjoys spending time with her cat and channeling her creativity into pottery.