2021 Panel Speaker Information
Participants on Professional Panel
Below is additional information regarding the speakers participating in our 11:25 am (EST) panel titled “Panel of Professional Women.”
Marian Frazier
Associate Chair of Statistical and Data Sciences
College of Wooster
Dr. Marian Frazier received her PhD in statistics at The Ohio State University in 2013. She is an Associate Professor in Statistical and Data Sciences at the College of Wooster, where she was instrumental in developing the SDS major and minor. She is also the Co-Director of Wooster’s Applied Methods and Research Experience, a summer consulting service through which Wooster students are hired by a local business, industry, or agency. These students work in teams to develop solutions for the client while gaining valuable industry experience and professional skills. Dr. Frazier’s research focuses on public health and evidence-based medicine, especially as it is practiced in rural northeast Ohio. She is also interested in statistics education research, and teaches courses across the undergraduate curriculum.
Nancy McMillan
Division Manager, Health Analytics
Battelle
After earning a BS in Mathematics and Computer Science from Muskingum University and an MS and PhD in Statistics from The Ohio State University, Dr. Nancy McMillan completed a two-year postdoc with the National Institute of Statistical Sciences and then started a 26-year career at Battelle. Over that time period she has worked and published on environmental exposure and risk assessment, transportation safety benefits, quantitative risk assessment related to CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear) terrorism, bioinformatics (analysis of genomic data), and digital surveillance, including analysis of unstructured text data from scientific literature. Her work has all focused on providing quantitative analysis that captures uncertainty to support science-based decision-making. Dr. McMillan is currently the information technology and data lead for the Operation Expanded Testing Midwest Coordination Center, a federally funded program providing COVID-19 testing to K-12 schools and congregate setting. She is also the manager of Battelle’s Health Analytics division; her group supports data science activities across Battelle’s Health, Environment & Infrastructure, and National Security Division business units.
Melissa Schafer
Risk Segmentation Leader
SafeAuto Insurance Company
Melissa Schafer graduated from The University of Dayton in 2004 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics and then earned a Master of Applied Statistics Degree in 2006 from The Ohio State University. Melissa quickly realized that insurance was a wildly interesting industry with multiple applications for data, modeling, and various statistical methods. She worked in analytic positions at Progressive, Valen Analytics, and Nationwide Insurance, before settling at SafeAuto Insurance, managing the Product R&D team. Melissa’s passion resides in turning raw data, oftentimes from disparate data sources, into tangible business outcomes that add value and increase profitability to her company. These processes can range from exploratory data analyses to non-linear, self-learning, multivariate predictive models.
Participants on Student Panel
Below is additional information regarding the speakers participating in our 1:50 pm (EST) panel titled “Panel of Undergraduate and Graduate Students.”
Betsy Ehmcke
MAS program
Betsy Ehmcke will receive her Master of Applied Statistics degree from Ohio State in May 2022. She studied engineering as an undergraduate and used design of experiments at Raytheon Technologies before returning to school to study statistics full-time. Betsy has interned with the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission where she works with population data. She’s most excited about the intersection between statistics and people, and hopes to work in survey statistics or consumer research after graduation.
Anna Halldorsdottir
Statistics PhD
Anna Halldorsdottir is a first year PhD student in statistics at The Ohio State University. She just completed an undergraduate degree as a statistics major at Cornell University, where her research focused on quantifying errors of earth-orbiting satellites. Her passion for statistics increased exponentially after she applied her research in two summer internship experiences at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In the future, she hopes to explore other research topics in big data and machine learning industry applications.
Laryssa Hedgecock
Statistics
Laryssa Hedgecock is in her junior year of the statistics program at Ohio State University. Her passion for statistics started when she was a small child listening to her great uncle talk about actuarial problems and asking him questions about those problems. She followed an unconventional path – through three different colleges and three different statistics-related majors – leading into her statistics major here at OSU.
Kat Husar
Data Analytics and Mathematics
Kat Husar is a fifth-year student completing majors in Data Analytics and Mathematics at The Ohio State University. She began her freshman year not knowing what her main interests are but after taking a couple of statistics classes realized this is her passion. Her interest grew even stronger after learning more about the applications of statistics in biology and computer science. Now she hopes to go to graduate school in statistics to deepen her knowledge of the field.
Micaela Richter
Biostatistics PhD
Micaela Richter is a second year PhD student in Biostatistics at The Ohio State University. She is interested in the ways that we can use statistics to inform interventions that improve health care access and reduce health disparities. Outside of school, she enjoys playing violin and rock climbing.
Courtney Schaller
Data Science and Mathematics
Courtney Schaller is a senior studying data science and mathematics with a statistics specialization at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD). She has always loved math and decided to study statistics after taking AP Statistics in high school. She is grateful to all of the strong women mentors who have encouraged her to pursue excellence in a male-dominated field and hopes to do the same for younger women and girls. She enjoys tutoring math through UTD’s Student Success Center and has experience as a data analyst and research assistant.