Certificate in Emerging Techniques in Analytics and Data Science

Ms. Mary Lou Hall is a senior manager in Accenture Federal Services. She serves as the Chief Data Scientist for the Defense group. Previously, she was an Operations Research Analyst in the U.S. Army, retiring as a Colonel in 2021. Most recently she served as the Director of Program, Budget, and Acquisition at the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC), and the Chief Data Scientist in the Directorate for Analysis at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

Mary Lou has a Masters in Operations Research from the Naval Postgraduate School, and a Master’s in Engineering Management from Saint Martin’s University, and a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Hall is a Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) and Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO). Mary Lou completed a 1-year Fellowship in Information Technology and Strategy at Carnegie Mellon University. She is interested in conducting and leading innovative research in support of strategic planning, policy and decision making, and enjoys working on real world problems with high performing teams, with a focus on continuous process improvements that move the organization toward strategic objectives.

Dr. Ian McCulloh is a managing director and the chief data scientist for Accenture Federal Services. His current work focuses on the application of artificial intelligence to improve democracy and government services. He also maintains adjunct faculty appointments at Johns Hopkins University in the Bloomberg School of Public health and the Whiting School of Engineering. His most recent academic papers have been focused on the neuroscience of persuasion and implementation of artificial intelligence programs. He is the author of “Social Network Analysis with Applications” (Wiley: 2013), “Networks Over Time” (Oxford: forthcoming) and has published 63 peer-reviewed papers.

Prior to joining Accenture, McCulloh served as associate professor at the Johns Hopkins University His latest research focused on strategic influence in online networks. McCulloh retired as a Lieutenant Colonel from the U.S. Army after 20 years of service with expertise in social network analysis, special operations and improvised explosive device forensics. During his military tenure, he founded the West Point Network Science Center and created the Army’s Advanced Network Analysis and Targeting (ANAT) program. In addition, he led interdisciplinary teams of scientists at Special Operations Command Central (SOCCENT) and Central Command (CENTCOM) to conduct global, data-driven, social science research to inform strategy for countering extremism and assessing military operations.

McCulloh holds a Ph.D. and Master’s degree from the Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Sciences, Masters degrees in Industrial Engineering and Applied Statistics from Florida State University, and a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Washington.

Dr. Scott is a “pracademic” who joined the Burtch Works team in 2022 as an Executive Recruiter & Analytics Thought Leader, after a variety of experiences, including: Data Science Senior Manager / Director of Statistics & Modeling at Accenture Federal Services; Academic Director for the MS in Business Analytics program at Notre Dame, and a full career as an operations research analyst (and leader of analytic teams) in the U.S. Army. He is also very involved as a volunteer and leader with the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), where he served as the first Chair of the Analytics Certification Board, the governing body for the Certified Analytics Professional (CAP) program. He has a PhD in Management Science, is a CAP, and also an Accredited Professional Statistician (PStat). Scott’s motto is, “Make yourself useful, doing something hard, with good people.” Scott enjoys traveling (he’s been to all 50 states and 15 countries), reading, cooking, and sitting around the firepit with family and friends.

Dr. Paul Rodrigues is the Natural Language Processing Science Director and a Data Science Principal Director at Accenture Federal Services, where he develops applied natural language processing (NLP) systems, leading interdisciplinary teams of computer scientists, programmers, subject matter experts, psychologists, language experts, and linguists to brainstorm, build, and deliver customer-oriented solutions. He supports NLP client delivery, pre-sale and post-sale client discussions, research initiatives, recruiting, staffing, and proposal development. He has served as a Principal Investigator for 10 federally funded research projects, authored over 25 peer reviewed research papers and over 20 long form client-focused research technical reports. Before joining Accenture, Dr. Rodrigues was Associate Research Scientist at the University of Maryland Applied Research Laboratory for Intelligence & Security, where he led a program in social media NLP. He has a Ph.D. in Linguistics (Computational) from Indiana University, a M.A. in Computational Linguistics, and a B.S. in Computer Science.