Club Coordinators

Serena Aeschilman

Master Student

Serena is very ambitious. She is involved with many women in cs groups. She hopes to make a change by running for Congress in 2024. She believes that there aren’t enough people in the government advocating for technology and hopes to be the first female with a Computer Science degree in the House of Representatives. In her free time, Serena is a performing aerial acrobat. She is also a happy dog mom to a pup named Astro. Serena is very friendly, so don't hesitate to approach her in person or online if you need anything. If you want to get involved with some of the organizations she is involved with, reach out to her!

Anna Bell

Undergraduate Student

Anna is a Data Science major. She participates in research at the School of Computing. Some of her interests are NLP and bioinformatics. She also likes to play the piano and go hiking year-round with her husky.

Todd Derrick

Undergraduate Student

Todd is a CS major and will be graduating next spring. Todd loves boardgames, movies, anime, and is fascinated by data compression and cryptography, especially when it comes to old school methods of encryption/comunication (vigenere ciphers, scytales, hydraulic telegraphs and polybius squares). Todd is always down for a movie night or giving show suggestions.

“I knew nothing which meant I was in the best position to learn.” ― Unknown</p>

Tajen Freeman

Undergraduate Student

Tajen Freeman has been interested in data science since he was a teenager, when he watched a computer program beat one of the world's best players at a board game called Go. A computer science major now, his interests lean mostly toward machine learning. Outside of comptuer science, Tajen is a textbook nerd. He loves fantasy, games of all kinds, and especially anything that can be treated as a puzzle.

“If you're always on time, it implies that you never have anything better you should be doing.” ― Brandon Sanderson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tajenfreeman/

Vivek Gupta

PhD Student

Vivek is a PhD student at the School of Computing, University of Utah. Previously, he was working as a Research Fellow in Microsoft Research Lab, India, in Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing group. He graduated as a dual degree student in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Kanpur in 2016. He is broadly interested in research in the field of Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing. He was the first coordinator of Special Interest in Machine Learning (SIGML), IIT Kanpur. To know more about his current research interest, you can visit his webpage here.

Owen Koppe

Undergraduate Student

Owen Koppe is a freshman double majoring in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics. He is particularly interested in how data science can be applied to social justice issues and how it can be used to shape public policy. Owen has worked as a summer fellow at the Quantitative Institute for the Study of Inclusion, Diversity and Equity where he got to see how data science is being applied to social justice problems. In his free time Owen races mountain bikes and runs ultra marathons.

Ari Lacanienta

Undergraduate Student

Ari Lacanienta is studying Data Science at the University of Utah. His main fields of interest are Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, although he is easily distracted by his many side projects. He currently works in software development, and when he isn’t writing code he loves to read, compose music, and hang out with friends.

Pranav Rajan

Master Student

Pranav Rajan received his BS in Computer Science and MS Computing: Human Centered-Computing with a focus in systems and data visualization in December 2022. Together with Kori South, Tajen Freeman, Todd Derrick and Serena Aeschilman he helped start the Utah Data Science Club in Spring 2020 and organize guest speakers with Vivek Gupta. Pranav helped design and run the D3 workshop with Kori South during the 2020-2021 school year as well as organize the guest speaker talks given by Alberto Cairo, Shirley Wu and Eunice Jun. Pranav's favorite memory from the club was meeting and hosting Alberto Cairo, Shirley Wu and Eunice Jun. He would also like to thank the following professors from the School of Computing and Center for Data Science for inspiring his interests in visualization and data analysis: Professor Jeff Phillips, Professor Bei-Wang Phillips, Professor Alex Lex, Professor Miriah Meyer and Professor Chris Johnson.

Ayushi Sharma

Master Student

Ayushi is a Computer Science Master's student at the University of Utah. She is an ardent learner who aims to solve problems efficiently. Problem-solving and Algorithms are the space where she locates her most grounded inclination. In 2018 she completed her bachelor's in Computer Science from the National Institute of Technology at Hamirpur, INDIA. After that, she had worked for three years for Oracle Financial Analytical Application - Enterprise Risk and Finance. She loves to paint, draw doodles, and owns an Instagram handle( @thedoodlish) to showcase her art. Ayushi is a potter head and is always up for a discussion on Algorithms and Harry Potter Series.

Bryce Shoemaker

Undergraduate Student

Bryce is a first year Data Science major at the University of Utah. He has an extreme interest in anything computer based. Such examples include coding, gaming, and computer building. Bryce also loves anything sci-fi and fantasy. This includes Starwars, Warhammer 40k, and Dungeon and Dragons. If someone is interested in anything Star Wars, Warhammer, or D&D related he’d be more than happy to explain any of the three to you! On another note, Bryce also loves to draw and paint on both paper and Photoshop! Outside of the indoor activities, Bryce also loves to mountain bike, hike, camp, and go hunting.

Kori South

Undergraduate Student

Kori is a Computer Science major with an emphasis in Entertainment Arts and Engineering. She grew up in rural Jamaica, and moved to Utah for college. Kori is passionate about Computing Education Research, Data Science, and their overlap. She is writing a book with her mother, Janette Kaloo, about Janette's experience with Stage III Breast Cancer. They hope to have it done by the end of the year!

Anna Little

Associate Director of Student-Engagement, Utah Center for Data Science

Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics, University of Utah

Anna’s research focus is developing and analyzing novel methods for finding structure in noisy, high-dimensional data using tools from probability, random matrix theory, graph theory, linear algebra, harmonic analysis, and machine learning. Although she am a mathematician by training, she also pursues inter-disciplinary collaborations where she can utilize tools from machine learning in domain specific areas including RNA data analysis and cybersecurity.

Jeff Phillips

Director, Utah Center for Data Science

Associate Professor, School of Computing, University of Utah

Jeff specializes in designing algorithms for data science. This includes work in geometric data analysis, data mining, scaling to big data, spatial statistics, databases, and machine learning. His recent focus has been on understanding word vector embeddings, large-scale spatial statistics, approximations in kernel methods, and developing new streaming algorithms for core tasks in data analysis.