Career Connection

April: Chisoo Lyons

• Title: Chief Program Director
• Company: WiDS Worldwide
• Date & Time: April 11, 11:00-11:50pm PST

• Room and Zoom: Zoom only Zoom link

• Bio: As Chief Program Director at Women in Data Science (WiDS), Chisoo is overseeing the portfolio of programs designed to elevate and empower women in the data science and AI fields.Prior to joining WiDS, Chisoo held numerous leadership positions in the Financial Services industry. She is a high-impact leader that brings strategic visions to life by controlling the intersection of technology, analytics, and human experts. She has built and led top-performing, global team and programs, in various organizational structures. She enjoys fostering innovation, developing game-changing solutions, and leveraging human expertise to produce tangible business results.

March: Danny Maciel

• Title: Agricultural Biologist
• Company: Butte County Agricultural Department
• Date & Time: March 26, 1:00-1:50pm PST

• Room & Zoom: Zoom only Zoom Link

• Bio: Danny is an Agricultural Biologist for the Butte County Agricultural Department. He was born in Southern California but raised in Baja California Mexico. Coming from a 3rd generation farming family, he’s made farming a huge part of his life. In 2015, he transferred to Chico State University to obtain an Agricultural Science degree in Crops and Horticulture. In 2019, he began to work full time at the Butte County Agricultural Department as an Agricultural Biologist. The primary goal and purpose of all county Agricultural Commissioners, statewide, is “To Promote and To Protect” agriculture. He inspects anything that is chemical related, for example; agriculture, structure pest control and maintenance garners. He is often in charge of overseeing the apiary program, certifying producers’ certificates and farmer markets, and not limited to other programs.
  
  

March: Full Career Panel!

Come learn from industry experts about various careers in the Agriculture and Natural Sciences fields. This is your chance to learn, network, and interact with professionals focusing on data analytics!

Our panel brings data-driven professionals from the USDA Economic Research Service, the California Department of Public Health, Red Bull and Conservation X Labs.

• Date & Time: Wed March 13, 10-10:50 am
• Live screening in Holt 171 (Chico State Campus)
• Zoom link

March: Elmera Azadpour

• Title: Data Scientist/Data Visualization Specialist
• Company: US Geological Survey, Water Mission Area
• Date & Time: March 5, 1:00-1:50pm PST

• Room & Zoom: Zoom only Zoom Link

• Bio: Elmera Azadpour is a Data Scientist/Data Visualization Specialist with United States Geological Survey (USGS) in the Water Mission Area (WMA). She contributes to individual projects by applying reproducible workflows and data visualization techniques to capture and communicate complex data-intensive concepts to non-technical audiences using a variety of media (such as print, web, research products). Broadly, her interests include climate-ecosystem interactions, urban ecology, terrestrial land surface modeling, ecohydrology, global carbon cycling and geophysical science. She is passionate about environmental/climate justice, BIPOC representation in STEM, and creating open & reproducible data products.

• Resources: Checkout her website: Elmera’s Website

December: Jesus Velazquez

• Title: Data Science Intern
• Company: JP Morgan
• Date & Time: December 7, 11:00-11:50pm PST

• Room & Zoom: Zoom only Zoom Link Passcode: Data

• Bio: Jesus is a current Chico State student working on his degree in Computer Science. He worked as a Data Science Intern with JP Morgan where he designed and implemented analytical solutions to problems that were found across the firm using custom data visualization in Python and Excel to effectively communicate trends, patterns, and analysis results. He also used Excel and SQL to find and narrow down data to make actionable insights for JP Morgan.

November: Bryan Castro

• Title: Health Program and Research Associate
• Company: The National Alliance for Hispanic Health (the Alliance)
• Date & Time: November 7, 12:00-12:50pm PST

• Room & Zoom: In person at the STAR Center and on Zoom Zoom Link

• Bio: Bryan J Castro is Health Program and Research Associate at The National Alliance for Hispanic Health (the Alliance) in Washington, DC. Bryan assists project directors in a variety of initiatives to improve health for Hispanic communities in the nation, including the promotion of All of Us Research Program, a CDC vaccination and education project, CDC Diabetes prevention program, and ¡Vive tu vida! Get Up! Get Moving!®, the Alliance’s signature events for promotion of physical activity, healthy eating, and information on local resources. Before joining the Alliance, Bryan worked for the interpreter program at VCU Health as well as an ORISE Health Equity Research Fellow at the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Minority Health.

October: Sara Bleich

• Title: Director of Nutrition Security and Health Equity
• Company: Food and Nutrition Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)
• Date & Time: October 24, 12:00-12:50pm PST
• Room & Zoom: Zoom and in person in Butte 209 Zoom Link
• Bio: Dr. Sara Bleich is the Director of Nutrition Security and Health Equity in the Food and Nutrition Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), after serving as the Senior Advisor for COVID-19 in the Office of the Secretary at USDA (2021). She is a policy expert and researcher who specializes in diet-related diseases, food insecurity and racial inequality with more than 175 peer-reviewed publications. She is on leave from her post as a Professor of Public Health Policy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Kennedy School of Government, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Dr. Bleich was also a White House Fellow during the Obama administration, where she worked at USDA as a Senior Policy Adviser for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services and with the First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! Initiative. She holds degrees from Columbia (BA, Psychology) and Harvard (PhD, Health Policy).

March: Full Career Panel! - Save the date.

REGISTER HERE: https://forms.gle/PFdqWqYPq4xKvm6r9

• Areas of interest: USDA Agriculture, Geospatial Data, Nutrient Management, Bioinformatics
• Date & Time: March 27, 11-12noon
• Zoom link
  
  

Feburary: Ricardo Aguilar

• Title: Research Computational Scientist I
• Company: Children’s Health of Orange County (CHOC)
• Date & Time: Feburary 10, 12pm-12:45pm PST
• Room & Zoom: Online Only. Zoom link
• Bio: Ricardo Aguilar is a graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles with a MS degree in Biostatistics. His academic research focused on identifying interaction terms in correlated, high-dimensional data using a feature selection machine learning algorithm. He has 5 years of experience as a statistical consultant where he gained experience in various areas of research such as life sciences, community health sciences, education, and agriculture. He is now a Research Computational Scientist I at Children’s Health of Orange County (CHOC) where he supports research through project ideation, study design, data management, inferential statistics, statistical and machine learning model building, and manuscript writing. Additionally, he catalogs and investigates databases to expand the scope of research conducted at CHOC.

November: Natalia Cañas

• Title: Research and Policy Associate
• Company: National Alliance for Hispanic Health
• Date & Time: November 30, 12pm-1pm PST
• Room & Zoom: Online Only. Zoom link
• Bio: Natalia leads research efforts on the NIH All of Us Research Program at the National Alliance for Hispanic Health. She is part of a team working to understand the impact of COVID-19 on the Hispanic community using All of Us data. Additionally, she has conducted qualitative research with the Latinx community in Washington, D.C. and in Colombia with Venezuelan migrants. Additionally, she has written mixed-methods reports on COVID-19 perceptions among Hispanics throughout the U.S. for CDC grants.

November: Jeff Gonzalez

• Title: Director of the Mathematical Statistics Research Center in the Office of Survey Methods Research
• Company: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
• Date & Time: November 17, 12pm-1pm PST
• Room & Zoom: Online Only. Zoom link
• Bio: Jeffrey Gonzalez is the Director of the Mathematical Statistics Research Center in the Office of Survey Methods Research at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. He completed his Ph.D. in Survey Methodology at the University of Maryland in 2012, following a MS degree in Biostatistics at the University of Michigan and a Bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina. Jeff has over 15 years of service in the Federal Statistical System, having recently been a Research Mathematical Statistician with the Economic Research Service at the USDA where he served as the technical lead for survey and data development for the Second National Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey as well as a Mathematical Statistician at the BLS from 2007 to 2019. His research interests include modular survey designs, responsive/adaptive designs, respondent burden, and nonresponse bias and in his free time enjoys spending time with his spouse their three cocker spaniels - Griffin, Winston, and Stirling - and enjoys traveling, marathoning, and non-competitive Cross Fitting.

October: Ana Zepeda

• Title: PHD Student in Geography
• Company: UC Davis
• Date & Time: October 27, 2pm-3pm PST
• Room & Zoom: Online only. Zoom link Passcode: 188851
• Bio: Ana is a Geography PhD student at UC Davis, where she studies the impacts of compounded disasters on farmers, specifically women farmers in Latin America and the Caribbean. Using qualitative data, she analyzes how public policies and educational programs can best assist farmers. In addition to her research, Ana is a teaching assistant for various courses at UC Davis, including qualitative research methods and international agricultural development theory.

September: Mariby Cruz

• Title: Process Analyst I
• Company: Quidel
• Date & Time: September 22, 12noon-1pm
• Room & Zoom: Online only. Zoom link
• Bio: Mariby is a Process Analyst at Quidel Corporation, a diagnostic healthcare manufacturer serving to enhance the health and well-being of people around the globe through the development of diagnostic solutions. She is responsible for developing reports to analyze data, to predict product quality, and summarize product performance periodically. She assists in product quality improvements which increase quality, lower cost, and increase manufacturing capacity.