Learn More About Our Research Consultants
Cindy M. Walker, PhD
President and CEO
Cindy has been consulting on statistical, evaluation and diverse analytic projects for 20+ across a variety of clients and organizations This includes the complete data collection and analytic process from custom data collection tools, such as tests and surveys, to modern analytics, including machine learning based predictive modeling.
She has:
- Served as director and lead consultant on hundreds of research analytic projects for a wide variety of industries including large school districts, higher education, healthcare, non-profit organizations, and industry.
- Worked on multi-year studies funded by large federal or state grants. This has included National Institute of Health funded grants to develop the Numeric Understanding in Medicine Instrument.
- Conducted research for Microsoft to determine if the scaling of their certification exams could be improved.
- Authored dozens of peer-reviewed academic publications (see Google Scholar).
- Co-Authored the definitive guide Categorical Data Analysis for the Behavioral and Social Sciences.
- Served as Professor of Educational Psychology and the Director of the Consulting Office for Research and Evaluation (CORE) for the University of Wisconsin System.
- Served as Vice President of Division D of American Educational Research Association (AERA
- Taught numerous courses in scale development, psychometrics, measurement, assessment, program evaluation, statistics, and research design.
- A unique ability and qualifications from her academic and teaching experience to simplify complex ideas so that they are more easily understood, and recognize when simple solutions vs complex solutions are needed.
Cindy earned a PhD in Quantitative and Evaluative Research Methodologies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a MS in Mathematics from Illinois State University, and a BS in Mathematics and Computer Science, from Roosevelt University.
Raji Swaminathan, PhD
Senior Research and Evaluation Scientist
Raji is Professor in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is an expert in qualitative research methods. Her work in qualitative research integrates traditional data gathering and analyses with emerging methods including collaborative photovoice and arts based visual methods.
Raji has:
- Co-authored four books on the subject, one of which has won the AESA Critics Choice award for 2020.
- Implemented qualitative research for deeper cultural understanding and for identifying problems, and synthesizing results that will lead to greater impact in different contexts.
- Trained researchers to use innovative methods to analyze multi-modal data through contextual or theoretical coding and domain analysis.
- Worked on NSF (National Science Foundation) grants with CORE(University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Center for Research Evaluation) as a qualitative evaluator for programs in higher education.
- Been part of expert teams for evaluating alternative schools and programs.
- Conducted workshops for teachers and students on data informed strategic decision making.
Raji has a PhD in Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education Syracuse University.
Tom Schmitt, PhD
Senior Research and Evaluation Scientist
Tom has nearly 20 years of experience in academic and private sector consulting and leading teams across a variety of research and statistical projects, including building analytic and data driven production software.
He has:
- Worked on and led 100s of projects as a psychometrician, statistician, data scientist and academic scientist with diverse work across academics, grants and industry. Experience include: statistical and applied psychometrics (including thought leadership in psychometrics), assessment, test/survey construction, adaptive testing, statistical simulations, and productionizing data and models into dashboards and software.
- Invited by Google to lead a team that built a data set, write-up and analysis for Google Cloud, Big Query as part of COVID-19 public datasets: Our continued commitment to open, accessible data.
- Led data and statistical analysis at BroadStreet Health building enterprise production grade software serving a variety of organizations, including Francician Health, a large multi-state healthcare system.
- Led a team that produced an interactive report for location based deprivation using the Area Deprivation Index (ADI) available at customized user inputed locations for different geographies (e.g., Census Block Group).
- Authored dozens of peer-reviewed academic publications (see Google Scholar).
- Awarded Outstanding Statistically-Based Research Article for Journal of Personality Assessment: Selecting the “Best” Factor Structure and Moving Measurement Validation Forward: An Illustration.
- Led data collection and analysis for the COVID-19 Data Project, which included teams of 100s of interns collecting and monitoring COVID-19 infection and death rates.
- Has been PStat® accredited by the American Statistical Association, which requires a rigorous combination of coursework and academic level statistical work.
- Worked as an Associate Professor at Eastern Michigan University providing statistical and methodological support for grants, research projects and academic publications.
Tom earned a PhD in Applied Statistics & Measurement from the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee.
Sakine Gocer Sahin, PhD
Psychometrician
Dr. Gocer Sahin has over ten years of operational psychometric experience from multiple perspectives. She has expertise in item calibration; calculating and evaluating item-level statistics to minimize measurement error; preparing and analyzing data for formal technical research reports, using Item Response Theory (IRT) and Classical Test Theory (CTT) modeling procedures; maintaining quality control in data collection and scoring processes and procedures; and conducting data visualizations for technical research reports. She has worked with a variety of data sets obtained from a variety of different data collection methods under a variety of research and test designs. Dr. Gocer Sahin’s experience includes practical applications of equating, instrument development, and instrument validation. She has previously worked on projects designed to determine the validity of foreign language exams, and to equate different instruments. One of her most interesting projects was to develop a tablet-based assessment tool to determine dyscalculia tendencies of students. Dr. Gocer Sahin has worked as a technical expert advisor in the field of psychometrics for the Vocational Qualifications Authority in Ankara, Turkey. She has served in a variety of consulting, training, and organizational roles. For example, she organized a multidisciplinary workshop to teach technical psychometric skills to attendees that ranged from hairdressers to teachers. In this workshop, participants learned how to evaluate the quality and fairness of their evaluations’ test items and settings. More recently, she has also been involved in a project sponsored by the European Union to write a technical report on performance assessment.
She completed her Ph.D. in Educational Measurement and Evaluation at Hacettepe University in Turkey. Her dissertation, entitled “Examining Parameter Estimation When Treating Semi-Mixed Multidimensional Constructs as Unidimensional,” argues that fitting semi-mixed structured multidimensional data as unidimensional model results in error. Upon the completion of her doctoral degree she did her post-doc training at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Quantitative Methods Department. Her post-doc project focused on the development of a new approach to the detection of cheating, in large scale high stakes tests.
James Walters, MS
Senior Software Engineer
James has spent over 20 years working in Software Engineering and Data Science, including the planning and development of analytic software products. He is comfortable anywhere in the development stack and with a variety of software and data science development tools, including enterprise production level software and statistical models.
James has:
- Worked on numerous data pipeline ETL projects of large data sets and API creation and integration.
- Lead software engineer and developer on a variety of projects for such organizations as BroadStreet Health, GE Healthcare, Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, Nestle, Hunger Task Force, Midland Health.
- Is computer language agnostic and has worked in a variety of technologies, including: Python/Django, R, C#/VB.NET, PHP, SQL, Java, C/C++, ColdFusion, iOS, Python, Unix, Linux, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, React, AWS, SQL, PostgreSQL, Mapbox, GraphQL, Node.js.
- Built a multiplayer trivia game for Wells Fargo in their trade show booth in JavaScript and Node.js.
- Productionized a variety of data and models, including healthcare and census data, and que wait-time projection models for major airports.
- Set up and maintained on-premises and cloud managed web hosting environments, performed architecture and senior development work on a wide variety of web applications, native mobile and desktop applications, and custom integration work for knowledge libraries and e-commerce platforms.
- Unique ability to work as a statistician, data scientist, programmer and software engineer.
James has a Master’s in Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science from Marquette University.
Jacqueline Gosz, M.S.
Research and Evaluation Scientist
Jacqueline has over 16 years’ experience in statistical analysis, database management, and statistical report writing. She has training and expertise in psychometric principals, including survey/instrument development and analysis.
Jacqueline has:
- Been published in nationally recognized journals, technical reports, and conference posters/proceedings.
- Supervised a team of customer engagement analysts for a dental insurance administrator where she led strategies to positively influence member access to quality and cost-effective dental care.
- Was a senior analyst for Harley-Davidson’s Consumer Insights and Analytics team in which she supported the development of insight into H-D’s global consumers and products and the communication of analytic results to the company’s internal stakeholders.
- Was a biostatistician for the Medical College of Wisconsin supporting the research of epidemiologists and pediatricians, helping with data and manuscript preparation including statistical analyses, interpretation and compilation of data, as well as co-writing and editing manuscripts.
- Served as a residential upper school math teacher at a prestigious boarding school in south Florida
- Taught Educational Statistical Methods I to undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee.
- Acted in 20+ plays throughout the community theater scene in the greater Milwaukee, WI area.
Jacqueline holds her Master’s of Science in Educational Statistics and Measurement from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Mathematics with a minor in Chemistry from St. Norbert College.
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