Practical Text Mining and Statistical Analysis for Non-structured Text Data Applications

Dr. Gary Miner PhD received a B.S. from Hamline University, St. Paul, MN, with biology, chemistry, and education majors; an M.S. in zoology and population genetics from the University of Wyoming; and a Ph.D. in biochemical genetics from the University of Kansas as the recipient of a NASA pre-doctoral fellowship. He pursued additional National Institutes of Health postdoctoral studies at the U of Minnesota and U of Iowa eventually becoming immersed in the study of affective disorders and Alzheimer's disease.

In 1985, he and his wife, Dr. Linda Winters-Miner, founded the Familial Alzheimer's Disease Research Foundation, which became a leading force in organizing both local and international scientific meetings, bringing together all the leaders in the field of genetics of Alzheimer's from several countries, resulting in the first major book on the genetics of Alzheimer’s disease. In the mid-1990s, Dr. Miner turned his data analysis interests to the business world, joining the team at StatSoft and deciding to specialize in data mining. He started developing what eventually became the Handbook of Statistical Analysis and Data Mining Applications (co-authored with Drs. Robert A. Nisbet and John Elder), which received the 2009 American Publishers Award for Professional and Scholarly Excellence (PROSE). Their follow-up collaboration, Practical Text Mining and Statistical Analysis for Non-structured Text Data Applications, also received a PROSE award in February of 2013. Gary was also co-author of “Practical Predictive Analytics and Decisioning Systems for Medicine (Academic Press, 2015). Overall, Dr. Miner’s career has focused on medicine and health issues, and the use of data analytics (statistics and predictive analytics) in analyzing medical data to decipher fact from fiction.

Gary has also served as Merit Reviewer for PCORI (Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute) that awards grants for predictive analytics research into the comparative effectiveness and heterogeneous treatment effects of medical interventions including drugs among different genetic groups of patients; additionally he teaches on-line classes in ‘Introduction to Predictive Analytics’, ‘Text Analytics’, ‘Risk Analytics’, and ‘Healthcare Predictive Analytics’ for the University of California-Irvine. Recently, until ‘official retirement’ 18 months ago, he spent most of his time in his primary role as Senior Analyst-Healthcare Applications Specialist for Dell | Information Management Group, Dell Software (through Dell’s acquisition of StatSoft (www.StatSoft.com) in April 2014). Currently Gary is working on two new short popular books on ‘Healthcare Solutions for the USA’ and ‘Patient-Doctor Genomics Stories’.

Dr. John Elder heads the United States’ leading data mining consulting team, with offices in Charlottesville, Virginia; Washington, D.C.; and Baltimore, Maryland (www.datamininglab.com). Founded in 1995, Elder Research, Inc. focuses on investment, commercial, and security applications of advanced analytics, including text mining, image recognition, process optimization, cross-selling, biometrics, drug efficacy, credit scoring, market sector timing, and fraud detection. John obtained a B.S. and an M.E.E. in electrical engineering from Rice University and a Ph.D. in systems engineering from the University of Virginia, where he’s an adjunct professor teaching Optimization or Data Mining. Prior to 16 years at ERI, he spent five years in aerospace defense consulting, four years heading research at an investment management firm, and two years in Rice's Computational & Applied Mathematics Department.

Dr. Andrew Fast leads research in text mining and social network analysis at Elder Research. Dr. Fast graduated magna cum laude from Bethel University and earned an M.S. and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. There, his research focused on causal data mining and mining complex relational data such as social networks. At ERI, Andrew leads the development of new tools and algorithms for data and text mining for applications of capabilities assessment, fraud detection, and national security. Dr. Fast has published on an array of applications, including detecting securities fraud using the social network among brokers and understanding the structure of criminal and violent groups. Other publications cover modeling peer-to-peer music file sharing networks, understanding how collective classification works, and predicting playoff success of NFL head coaches (work featured on ESPN.com).

Dr. Thomas Hill is Senior Director for Advanced Analytics (Statistica products) in the TIBCO Analytics group. He previously held positions as Executive Director for Analytics at Statistica, within Quest's and at Dell's Information Management Group. He was a Co-founder and Senior Vice President for Analytic Solutions for over 20 years at StatSoft Inc. until the acquisition by Dell in 2014. At StatSoft, he was responsible for building out Statistica into a leading analytics platform. Dr. Hill received his Vordiplom in psychology from Kiel University in Germany, earned an M.S. in industrial psychology and a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Kansas. He was on the faculty of the University of Tulsa from 1984 to 2009, where he conducted research in cognitive science and taught data analysis and data mining courses. He has received numerous academic grants and awards from the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Health, the Center for Innovation Management, the Electric Power Research Institute, and other institutions. Over the past 20 years, his team has completed diverse consulting projects with companies from practically all industries in the United States and internationally on identifying and refining effective data mining and predictive modeling / analytics solutions for diverse applications. Dr. Hill has published widely on innovative applications for data mining and predictive analytics. He is the author (with Paul Lewicki, 2005) of Statistics: Methods and Applications, the Electronic Statistics Textbook (a popular on-line resource on statistics and data mining), a co-author of Practical Text Mining and Statistical Analysis for Non-Structured Text Data Applications (2012) and Practical Predictive Analytics and Decisioning Systems for Medicine (2014); he is also a contributing author to the popular Handbook of Statistical Analysis and Data Mining Applications (2009). Dr. Hill also authored numerous patents related to data science, Machine Learning, and specialized applications of of analytics to various domains.

Bob Nisbet, PhD, is a Data Scientist, currently modeling precancerous colon polyp presence with clinical data at the UC-Irvine Medical Center. He has experience in predictive modeling in Telecommunications, Insurance, Credit, Banking. His academic experience includes teaching in Ecology and in Data Science. His industrial experience includes predictive modeling at AT&T, NCR, and FICO. He has worked also in Insurance, Credit, membership organizations (e.g. AAA), Education, and Health Care industries. He retired as an Assistant Vice President of Santa Barbara Bank & Trust in charge of business intelligence reporting and customer relationship management (CRM) modeling.