Founders

New America Grant, Designee

As Founding Director of Sewanee’s Office of Civic Engagement, New America Public Interest Technology-University Network  Designee Jim Peterman has been instrumental in creating an innovative program of civic engagement that focuses on building reciprocal and mutually beneficial community partnerships and providing opportunities for students to work with community partners to effect social change. A University of California, Berkeley-educated philosopher who has written on Philosophy as Therapy,  and Whose TraditionI? Which Dao? on the importance of early Confucianism for Western ethics, Peterman has applied principles of Confucianism to community development as it relates to human flourishing and societal obligations. The Sewanee DataLab project integrates this view of ethics with the use of academic resources to train students to support the social change missions of partner organizations.

Faculty Director

Dr. Rudd is a mathematician fascinated by statistical modeling, data analysis, and the tensions between theory, practice, and interpretability in data science. He has been using R and RStudio for years in his teaching and research, Rudd also has experience with software development and web applications, and enjoys learning new tools and technologies. He welcomes opportunities to apply his skills and experience to practical problems!

Curriculum Developer and Instructor

A graduate of the University of the South C’08 and a Data Science for Social Good fellow, Joe Brew is a data scientist with a background in public health and economics. Brew  co-founded Hyfe with the intention of scaling up infectious disease surveillance so that public health authorities can monitor cough frequency variation in space-time. With an  MPH from the Copenhagen School of Global Health / the Andalusian School of Public Health, he received his  Ph.D. from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam / the University of Barcelona. When not working on his own research, he does data consultation with his brother Ben, through their consultancy  DataBrew. 

Instructor

Ben is originally from Gainesville, Florida and earned a BA in Economics from The University of the South in Tennessee (2012). He graduated with a Master’s in Economics from the Paris School of Economics and the Sorbonne in France (2015) and spent the following summer as a data science fellow at the University of Chicago's Data Science for Social Good program. He is currently working as a bioinformatician in the Genetics and Genome Biology Lab at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. In his free time, he enjoys playing basketball, cycling, and watching the Toronto Raptors.

Curriculum Developer and Mentor

Eric Keen is a data scientist, marine ecologist, and educator. He is a professor of Environmental Studies at Sewanee, the Science Co-director at BCwhales, a research biologist at Marecotel, and a data scientist at Hyfe, Inc. He earned his BA at Sewanee, his PhD at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and a Fulbright Fellowship to teach in Indonesia. His research focuses upon coastal sustainability issues and Pacific whale ecology.