Data-Driven Science Alyson Wilson
Professor, Statistics
Alyson Wilson joined NC State in August 2013 as a Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence Program cluster hire in Data-Driven Science. A professor in the Department of Statistics, she is internationally known for her work in Bayesian methods, reliability, and the application of statistics to problems in defense and national security. Her research focuses on combining heterogeneous sources of information to understand complex problems. A central aspect of this research is developing methods to appropriately quantify uncertainty with diverse information sources. Wilson further develops this work by building interdisciplinary bridges across the university, and by serving as the principal investigator for the Laboratory for Analytic Sciences and director of the Data Science Initiative.
Wilson received her Ph.D. in statistics from Duke University, her master of science in statistics from Carnegie-Mellon University, and her bachelor of arts in mathematical sciences from Rice University. Previously, Wilson was a research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses Science and Technology Policy Institute, where she provided research support for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. She has worked as an associate professor in the Department of Statistics at Iowa State University, a technical staff member/scientist in the Statistical Sciences Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), and a senior operations research analyst with Cowboy Programming Resources. Wilson has served on numerous national panels, most recently the National Academy of Sciences Panel on Integrating Human, Machines and Networks: A Global Review of Data-to-Decision Technologies. She is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She is a winner of the Army Wilks Award, the LANL Director’s Distinguished Performance Award, the LANL Star Award, the Department of Energy Defense Programs Award of Excellence, and the LANL Achievement Award. She is a founder and past chair of the ASA’s Section on Statistics in Defense and National Security.
