Census Bureau Director John Thompson Appoints New Members to Census Scientific Advisory Committee
Census Bureau Director John Thompson Appoints New Members to Census Scientific Advisory Committee
NEWS
RELEASE: CB15-174
Barbara Anderson Named New Chairwoman
U.S. Census
Bureau Director John H. Thompson has named six new members and a chairwoman to
the Census Bureau’s Scientific Advisory Committee, chartered to provide advice
on the design, operation and implementation of Census Bureau programs.
“We are
excited to add such an array of expertise to our advisory committee,” Thompson
said. “These are leading voices from the scientific community, offering the
kind of experience and outside perspective that the Census Bureau needs as we
set course for the future of data collection while maintaining our commitment
to statistical quality.”
The new
Census Scientific Advisory Committee members are:
·Juan Pablo
Hourcade,
associate professor at the University of Iowa’s Department of Computer Science.
His main area of research is human-computer interaction. Hourcade previously
worked in the Census Bureau’s Statistical Research Division.
·Jeff Lower, executive vice
president of IIC Technologies based in Huntsville, Ala. He has more than 22
years of geospatial experience, managing programs for the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers, U.S. Geological Society, U.S. Department of Agriculture, among
others.Lower just completed a two-year
term as president of the Management Association of Private Photogrammetric
Surveyors, the only U.S. national trade association of private sector geospatial
firms.
·Kathryn Pettit, a senior research
associate in the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center at the
Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. Her research focuses on measuring and
understanding neighborhood change.
·Allison Plyer, the executive
director and chief demographer of The Data Center, a New Orleans-based private
nonprofit organization devoted to independent research. She is lead author of
The New Orleans Index series, developed in collaboration with the Brookings
Institution to analyze the state of New Orleans’ recovery from Hurricane
Katrina and to track the region’s progress toward prosperity.
·Krishna Rao, director of
economic product and research at Zillow, where he leads a team focused on
producing impartial, data-driven economic analysis on the U.S. housing market and
transforming real estate data and economic trends into insights and research
for consumers, industry professionals, policymakers and academics.
·Andrew A.
Samwick,
a professor of economics and director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for
Public Policy and the Social Sciences at Dartmouth College. In 2003, he joined
the staff of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, serving for a year
as its chief economist.
Additionally,
Director Thompson has appointed Barbara Anderson as chairwoman of the Census
Scientific Advisory Committee. Anderson is a sociology and population studies
professor at the University of Michigan. The former faculty member at Yale and
Brown universities has published articles on effects of an interviewer’s race
in surveys and on issues of data quality.
“A lot of the challenges that face the Census
Bureau are common throughout the world,” Anderson said. “Having international
experience in a comparative perspective is helpful in giving advice to my own
government.”
Anderson heads
the 21 members of the Census Scientific Advisory Committee, who each serve
three-year terms. The committee meets twice a year to address policy, research
and technical issues relating to a full range of Census Bureau programs and
activities, including communications, decennial, demographic, economic, field
operations, geographic, information technology and statistics.
“One of the most interesting things about being
here is to see the breadth of the different surveys and censuses that are
conducted,” Andrew Samwick, one of the new advisory committee members said.
“You begin to appreciate the very large operational effort that is behind the
data.”