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Eric Bradlow
Wharton Vice Dean of Analytics and Chairperson, Wharton Marketing Department
Professor Bradlow applies high-powered statistical models to areas including Internet search and product assortment, sports, education, and medicine. His research involves Bayesian modeling, statistical computing, and machine learning with application to business problems. He is a fellow of the INFORMS Society for Marketing Science, a fellow of the American Statistical Association, and the American Educational Research Association. His work has been published in numerous academic journals. He is also associate editor for the Journal of the American Statistical Association and the Journal of Marketing Research. Bradlow is a past statistical fellow of Bell Labs, and previously worked in the Statistics Research Group of the Educational Testing Service and at DuPont’s Corporate Marketing and Business Research Division.
Desmond Upton Patton
Brian and Randi Schwartz University Professor, joint appointments in the School of Social Policy & Practice and the Annenberg School for Communication
Professor Patton’s work explores the relationship between social media and gang violence. In particular, he studies how communities constructed online can influence often harmful behavior offline. His early research involved detecting trauma and preempting violence on social media, establishing him as an expert on AI language analysis and bias. In 2018, Patton published a groundbreaking finding in Digital Medicine, which uncovered grief as a pathway to aggressive communication on Twitter. He has since expanded his research to include working with social workers, communities, and youth. He is a member of the Scientific Board for Children and Screens Institute of Digital Media and Child Development.
Raina Merchant
Vice President and Chief Transformation Officer, University of Pennsylvania Health System; Professor of Emergency Medicine, and Director of the Center for Digital Health, Perelman School of Medicine
Dr. Merchant works at the intersection of digital media and health to bridge new technologies in the fields of cardiovascular health, mental health, cancer care, surgical care, public health, health equity, and resuscitation science. Her research has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health since 2011. She has over 185 peer-reviewed publications in journals including The Journal of the American Medical Association, Circulation, and Health Affairs. In addition, Dr. Merchant’s work has been featured in Wired, the Economist, New York Times, the Atlantic and other publications. She is an Aspen Health Innovators Fellow and was recognized by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as one of 10 investigators likely to have a significant impact on the future of health and healthcare in the US.
Greg Ridgeway
Chair of Criminology and Professor of Statistics and Data Science, Penn Arts & Sciences
Professor Ridgeway’s research involves statistical, computational, and analytical methods to improve our understanding of crime and the functioning of the justice system. His methods have been put into practice in the police departments of Cincinnati, Los Angeles, and New York City; in federal public defender organizations; and in drug treatment program evaluations. Prior to Penn, Ridgeway was the Acting Director of the National Institute of Justice, an agency charged with advancing justice by strengthening the social, physical, and forensic sciences. He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and is the inventor on eight awarded U.S. patents.