Our team
Below is a list of the current members affiliated to the lab. Feel free to visit their personal or academic websites for additional details on their research. Everyone is also available in case you’re interested in reaching out to them by email.
Current members
Cristian Román-Palacios, PhD
Principal Investigator, Assistant Professor
Early Career fellow at the Center for Diverse Leadership in Science, University of California, Los Angeles. Cristian's research is focused on the intersection between evolutionary biology, climate change, and applied machine learning. He is generally interested in answering questions in Evolutionary Biology and developing methods and tools for different fields.
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PI
Kiran Basava
Postdoctoral Researcher
2024 - Present
Kiran’s research uses phylogenetic methods and comparative databases to explore cultural evolution in humans and other animals. She completed her PhD in Anthropology at the University of Oxford. Her work in the lab will center on building a preliminary database of behavioral traditions in different animal populations and integrating this with existing biodiversity measures and data.
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Postdoc
Hector D. Garcia-Verdugo
Research Laboratory Manager
2023 - Present
Hector is the data diversity lab’s Manager. He holds dual degrees in Neuroscience and Philosophy from the University of Arizona. With a biology-focused career since 2013, he is dedicated to bridging science and the humanities to advance equitable causes. From his position at the data diversity lab, Hector is interested in offering a unique perspective and a commitment to creating a just future.
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Staff
Former members
Danielle Van Boxel, PhD
Graduate Associate
2022 - 2024
With a background in statistical computing, Danielle's research approaches ensemble machine learning. Her PhD dissertation focused on developing novel regression and classification algorithms that show consistent precision in a wide range of datasets. Danielle also mentors junior graduate students in scientific computing and contributes to grant writing within the lab.
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PhD student
Tanisha Lohchab
Research Data Support Specialist
2024 - Present
With a background in Data Science, Tanisha joined the Data Diversity lab as a Research Data Support Specialist, working on a project centered around exploring the transferability of species distribution models to resurvey data. Tanisha modeled geospatial data and visualized the results to better understand variation in the distribution of the species of the re-survey data across the globe.
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Intern
HM Abdul Fattah
MSc student
2024
With a strong foundation in computer science, HM is passionate about Natural Language Processing (NLP), Applied Machine Learning and Data Visualization. Currently his focus lies on analyzing the 3D shape of cities for his capstone project, which entails working extensively with geospatial data and visualizations. This approach offers a more comprehensive understanding of cities, surpassing the limitations of traditional 2D studies.
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MSc capstone student
Shih-Hsuan Lo
MSc student
2024
Shih Hsuan is a data science major with a passion for image processing and object detection. For his current capstone project at the lab, Shih Hsuan is applying machine learning techniques to enhance the capabilities of image analysis and object identification.
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MSc capstone student
Jiayue He
MSc student
2024
Jiayue is a masters student majored in Information Science with a focus on Human-Centered Compute. She has a diverse background in game development, machine learning, and education. As she plans to embark on a Ph.D. in Mining at the University of Arizona, her research in the lab focuses on employing data-driven solution to advance mine safety and on integrating STEM education within the intelligent mining industry.
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MSc capstone student
Ani Chitransh
MSc student
2024
Ani is a graduate student working towards her capstone. Ani’s professional journey is characterized by her proficiency with a range of technologies including Python, SQL, R, TensorFlow, and PyTorch, as well as her adeptness with big data tools like Hadoop and Spark. Her work in the lab involves transforming complex datasets into actionable insights, with a significant focus on optimizing business outcomes through innovative data-driven strategies.
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MSc capstone student
Tom Olla
MSc student
2024
Tom is a Tucson native with a passion for data visualization. He leverages R to import, clean, and create visualizations to better answer research questions. His current work in the lab aims to show the impact of COVID-19 lockdowns on the levels of several atmospheric and human emission metrics.
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MSc capstone student
Rob Speer
MSc student
2024
Rob completed his MSc in Data Science with Dr. Roman-Palacios with a Capstone project analyzing past water use and future water demand in the City of Flagstaff, where he currently works as the GIS Manager.
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MSc capstone student
Gloria Moraa Angwenyi
MSc student
2024
Gloria conducted her MS in Data Science capstone project at the Data Diversity Lab. She focused on examining patterns of acceptance in admissions data for the MS in Data Science at the iSchool. She uses both descriptive approaches and machine learning to identify features that predicts whether an applicant would effectively join the program based on details from the application.
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MSc capstone student
Daniela E. Valladolid-Garnica, PhD
Research Data Support Specialist II
2023
Daniela’s project seeks to understand the effects of climate-related range shifts and local extinction in the trophic structure of marine communities. Her research borrows tools from ecology, data mining, and data science. She is strongly interested in conducted statistical analyses in R and implementing machine learning algorithms to explain and assess patterns of trophic structure, dynamics, and predator-prey interactions in food webs.
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Intern
Yi Chien Lee
Research Assistant
2023
Yi Chien specializes in leveraging R programming to interpret human behavior and societal trends through data analysis. She currently uses python to relate socioeconomic indicators to academic performance indexes in SAT-like exams across the globe.
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Intern
Ethan Davis
MSc student
2023
Ethan is a queer student in the Master of Data Science program at the University of Arizona. He previously earned his B.S. in Physics at the University of New Hampshire, where he helped develop neural networks to classify magnetosphere events using data from NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission. His current project uses k-means clustering to group cities based on human and climatic features.
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MSc capstone student
Jhan C. Salazar
Research Data Support Specialist II
2023
Jhan joined the data diversity lab during Summer 2023. He wrote the first draft of an online book focused on teaching Machine Learning to a Spanish-speaking audience. This book was contextualized using examples from different recent papers in Ecology. By the same time, Jhan was completing his Ph.D. at the Losos Lab at Washington University St. Louis.
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Intern
YuanJea Hew
MSc student
2023
YuanJea joined the lab in 2023 to work on a pilot grant funded through UArizona and One Health. YuanJea was co-advised by Dr. Chris Lim, Assistant Professor at the Community, Environment & Policy Department at the University of Arizona.
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MSc capstone student
Darwood Martin
MSc student
2023
Darwood worked towards his MS in Data Science capstone in the Lab. He collaborated with Katie Stringham on putting together regression and classification models to predict the occurrence of local extinction in elevational gradients. Darwood was working for Raytheon during his position in the lab.
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MSc capstone student
Katie Stringham
MSc student
2023
Katie worked with Darwood towards his MS in Data Science capstone in the Lab. Katie focused on assembling regression models to predict the frequency of local extinctions across elevational gradients. Katie was working for Raytheon during her position in the lab.
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MSc capstone student
Reza Ehsani
MSc student
2023
Reza finalized his capstone for his MS in Data Science at the lab with a project entitled 'Using CloudSat to Advance the Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) over Antarctica' which was submitted for publication in 2023. Reza obtained his PhD in 2023 at the University of Arizona from the Department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences. He is primarily interested in remote sensing of precipitation, retrieval combinations, and error estimation. After graduation, he joined Zipline as a Climate Data Scientist (Machine Learning Engineer).
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MSc capstone student
Eastern Kang
MSc student
2022
Eastern worked generating a reproducible survey pipeline for social sciences. This work was co-advised by Dr. Javier Osorio, Assistant Professor in the School of Government and Public Policy at the University of Arizona.
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MSc capstone student
Kyle Arechiga
MSc student
2022
Kyle developed an unsupervised learning framework to detect a stable arrangement of cities across the globe based on environmental and anthropogenic features. He is widely interested in data analyses, has strong programming skills, and collaborative skills. Kyle joined the lab to conduct directed research during one semester. During the same time, Kyle was an MS in Data Science at the University of Arizona and worked at Raytheon in Tucson.
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MSc capstone student
Laura Falk
MSc student
2022
Laura worked on creating a model to detect particular levels of E. coli in the Santa Cruz River in Arizona. She worked in the lab for two semesters (Spring and Fall, 2022). The results from her work, directly affecting the work at that time in the National Park Service, can be found on her personal website. Laura's position in the lab was supported by the Data Science Institute at the University of Arizona as well as Knowledge River at the School of Information. Laura is currently employed as a Data Scientist for the CoVHORT at the University of Arizona.
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MSc capstone student
Quan Gan
MSc student
2022
Quan's project in the lab focused on implementing code in stan to perform Bayesian calibration and temperature reconstructions using clumped isotope datasets. After finalizing his capstone project in the lab, Quan joined Robotic Software Engineer at Mujin Corp Inc.
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MSc capstone student
Salena Torres
PhD student
2022
Dr. Román-Palacios was Salena’s faculty advisor for the Data Science ambassador’s fellowship during 2023. Salena project focused on discussing training opportunities and discussing access and instruction approaches for students with different degrees of hearing loss. During the same time, Salena was working towards her PhD at the Machine Learning for Artificial Intelligence lab, led by Dr. Clayton Morrison, at the School of Information.
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Intern
Sarthak Haldar
Research Assistant
2022
Sarthak was hired as a Research Assistant during Spring 2022 to work on BarrioMap, a shiny app that arouse from the collaboration between Dr. Román-Palacios and Mackenzie Waller, faculty at the College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture at the University of Arizona. By the time Sarthak joined the lab, he was studying his Master's in Data Science at the University of Arizona.
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MSc capstone student
Sophie Fournier
MSc student
2022
Sophie concluded in the Data Diversity lab her master’s in data science capstone project implementing machine learning models to infer phylogenies.
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MSc capstone student
Wonkyun Yim
Research Data Support Specialist II
2022
Wonkyun completed his MS in Data Science capstone at the Lab. He was then hired as Staff Researcher (2022) for the lab to complete his work on simulating species’ responses to projected climate change using synthetic populations.
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Staff
MSc capstone student
Intern
Tingting Thompson
MSc student
2022
Tingting completed her MS in Data Science capstone in the lab. During this time, she came up with a project focused on assessing student's performance in online courses using data retrieved from D2L at the University of Arizona. Tingting is currently a Data Science Consultant at Avanade in NYC and Adjunct Lecturer at the School of Information (University of Arizona; ESOC 214).
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MSc capstone student
Kyle Clements
Undergraduate student / Intern
2022
Kyle focused on collecting US census-like datasets across the globe. Additionally, Kyle explored the likelihood of extracting façade data from google street view photos. Kyle conducted independent research in the lab during his senior year as a CS student at the University of Arizona.
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Undergraduate student
Intern
Valentina Sarria-Rodríguez
Undergraduate student
2018 - 2020
Valentina was Dr. Román-Palacios’ first undergraduate advisee (2018). Her project focused on reviewing the evolutionary relationships within Psocidae (Insecta) and inferring the phylogenetic position of newly collected neotropical psocids using molecular phylogenetics.
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Undergraduate student