Who We Are

Staff

Lynn Johnson, Ph.D., Director and Statistical Consultant

Lynn M. Johnson has a Ph.D. in statistics from Cornell University and M.S. degrees from the University of Colorado in biometry and mathematics. Before pursuing her doctoral degree, Lynn held positions as a statistical analyst with the Continuing Improvement in Cardiac Surgery Program with the Department of Veterans Affairs in Denver, Colorado, and as a statistical assistant with the Division of Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control in Fort Collins, Colorado. Her interests range from statistical methodology to statistical applications in epidemiology, nutrition, environmental science, and the social sciences. She has methodological publications in statistical journals such as Biometrika and Statistics in Medicine and applied publications in a diverse variety of journals including The Annals of Thoracic Surgery, Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, and Environmental and Experimental Biology.

Email: lms86@cornell.edu 
Twitter: @JohnsonLynnM 
Phone: 607-255-8211

Erika Mudrak, Ph.D., Statistical Consultant

Erika joined the CSCU staff in the fall of 2013. She has a PhD in Ecology (Botany Department) and an MS in Biometry (Statistics Department) from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Her research there focused on community ecology and spatial ecology of forest understory plants. She was also a postdoc at Iowa State University, working on landscape ecology and spatial modeling of invasive desert species and their relationship with fire risk. Her research interests include multivariate and spatial analysis, data visualization, data management and reproducible research. Erika was a participant in the inaugural Summer Institute 2013 at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis.

Email: elm26@cornell.edu
Twitter: @ErikaMudrak
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Stephen Parry, M.S., Statistical Consultant

Stephen ParryStephen joined the CSCU in the summer of 2015. He has a M.S. in mathematics from Missouri State University and a M.S. in statistics from Syracuse University. He has held several teaching positions in the mathematics departments of near-by colleges, and now enjoys teaching workshops on a variety of statistical concepts. Stephen is interested in statistical applications relating to nutrition, sociology, psychology, and linguistics and regularly consults with clients on a broad range of topics including, but not limited to, structural equation modeling, generalized linear mixed models, and data reduction techniques. He has been published in the Journal of Public Health, PLoS ONE, and Obesity.

Email: sp2332@cornell.edu
Twitter: @statsysteve
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Matt Thomas, PhD, Statistical Consultant

Matt ThomasMatt Thomas joined the CSCU in 2022 and was excited to return to Cornell where he completed his B.A. in mathematics in 2006. Matt has an M.S. and a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Arizona, where he focused on quantitative mathematics education, and held faculty positions at the University of Central Arkansas and Ithaca College. Matt’s enthusiasm for statistics springs from the diversity of methods he has applied to his own research, including item response theory and psychometric methods for evaluating student performance in calculus, qualitative and mixed methods approaches to understanding how mathematicians and learners use algorithmic thinking, and using machine learning techniques to make predictions about the composition date of American folk dances. Matt is interested in issues of measurement and causal inference and appreciates the nuance and challenges of data manipulation and management. He enjoys teaching statistics and coding, and looks forward to working with a clients on a range of topics including, but not limited to, psychometric and item response theory models, mixed models, structural equation models, and experimental design.

Email: mthomas@cornell.edu 
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Andrew Siefert, Ph.D., Statistical Consultant

Photo of Andrew SiefertAndrew joined the CSCU in fall 2023. His research background is in population and community ecology. He has a PhD in Biology from Syracuse University and did postdocs at UC Davis and University of Wyoming with a stint as a statistical analyst at Ithaca College in between. He enjoys learning new statistical and computational methods from various disciplines and matching them to research questions. His particular interests include generalized linear mixed models, Bayesian methods, machine learning, and causal inference.

Email:  asiefert@cornell.edu 
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Kenneth Tyler Wilcox, Ph.D., Statistical Consultant

Tyler joined the CSCU in the fall of 2023. Originally from Central New York, he is happy to return to the area after completing his Ph.D. in quantitative psychology at the University of Notre Dame and a postdoc at Cornell at the Center for Integrative Developmental Science. He received his M.S. in Applied Statistics and a B.S. in Psychology at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Tyler’s research interests include methodological work in quantitative psychology, integrative data analysis, Bayesian statistics and applications in a variety of domains including well-being, mental health, and comparative cognition. His work has been published in a variety of journals including Psychological Methods, Multivariate Behavioral Research, Behavioural Processes, Journal of Clinical Psychology, and Innovation and Aging. Tyler enjoys teaching statistical methods and statistical programming, including, but not limited to, multilevel modeling, Bayesian methods, structural equation and measurement modeling, experimental design, and intensive longitudinal data.

Email:  ktw34@cornell.edu 
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Faculty Consultants

  • Sumanta Basu, Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics and Data Science
  • James Booth,  Professor in the Department of Statistics and Data Science
  • Martin Wells, Chair of the Department of Statistics and Data Science and Charles A. Alexander Professor of Statistical Sciences

Additional statistics faculty may elect to be associated to CSCU and occasionally volunteer their expertise to researchers or are available for collaboration.

Advisory Board

  • James Booth, Ph.D., Chair of the Department of Statistics and Data Science and Professor in the Department of Statistics and Data Science
  • Donna Bunce, Director of Administration for the Department of Statistics and Data Science
  • Patricia Cassano, Ph.D., Director of Division of Nutritional Sciences, Professor in DNS and Weill Medical School
  • Wendy Kozlowski, M.S., Director, Research Data and Open Scholarship at the Cornell University Library and Cornell Data Services group coordinator
  • Peter Paradise , M.B.A., M.S., Associate Dean, Office of Finance and Administration in CALS
  • Felix J. Thoemmes , Ph.D., Associate Professor in Human Development and Psychology
  • Martin Wells, PhD., Charles A. Alexander Professor of Statistical Sciences