{"id":1573,"date":"2022-05-31T10:59:03","date_gmt":"2022-05-31T14:59:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magazine.alumni.ncsu.edu\/?p=1573"},"modified":"2022-05-31T10:59:03","modified_gmt":"2022-05-31T14:59:03","slug":"60-seconds-with-alyson-wilson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/2022\/60-seconds-with-alyson-wilson\/","title":{"rendered":"60 Seconds with Alyson Wilson"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alyson Wilson is a statistics professor who works with national laboratories and the NC State Data Science Academy<\/a>. She’s also principal investigator for the Laboratory for Analytic Sciences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It sounds like you are NC State\u2019s top spy. Is that a fair description of what you do?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Laughs.) No. It\u2019s trying to identify ways we can expand our engagement with the defense and security community. That\u2019s helping people identify opportunities to get research funding. That\u2019s working on internship opportunities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of your job is to work on \u201cstrategic research development around national defense initiatives.\u201d Any interesting stories you can share?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The coolest part is the growing engagement we have with the 82nd Airborne. For example, we were helping them look at analytics to track sentiment and influence in social media. We\u2019re also working with them on a web-based tool that helps them be more accurate in how they order their ammunition for training activities. Some of these are not that sexy but are incredibly practical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Laboratory for Analytic Sciences is a partnership between the university and the National Security Agency. Any interesting projects you can share, or is it all top secret?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our portfolio, for the most part, is unclassified. One example is in areas of conflict, where the United States has lots of data. Right now, you\u2019ve got soldiers who have to watch all this video to see if they can find something \u201cinteresting.\u201d Do I see troop movement? Do I see guys with guns? One of the things we\u2019re looking at is how do you triage really big sets of data\u2009\u2014\u2009it\u2019s video, it\u2019s audio, it\u2019s text\u2009\u2014\u2009to find the stuff that might be interesting. Can you teach a computer to decide if something is not interesting? And then how do you make the computer work with the analyst? We do a lot of thinking about problems where we need that human\/machine team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does the Data Science Academy do?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the things the academy is doing is teaching a set of one-credit courses. The idea is that these are not just for computer science and statistics students. We\u2019re recognizing that data science is really impacting every discipline. It\u2019s changing how you do public health. It\u2019s changing how you do history.<\/p>\n","protected":false,"raw":"\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Alyson Wilson is a statistics professor who works with national laboratories and the NC State Data Science Academy<\/a>. She's also principal investigator for the Laboratory for Analytic Sciences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It sounds like you are NC State\u2019s top spy. Is that a fair description of what you do?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Laughs.) No. It\u2019s trying to identify ways we can expand our engagement with the defense and security community. That\u2019s helping people identify opportunities to get research funding. That\u2019s working on internship opportunities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of your job is to work on \u201cstrategic research development around national defense initiatives.\u201d Any interesting stories you can share?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The coolest part is the growing engagement we have with the 82nd Airborne. For example, we were helping them look at analytics to track sentiment and influence in social media. We\u2019re also working with them on a web-based tool that helps them be more accurate in how they order their ammunition for training activities. Some of these are not that sexy but are incredibly practical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Laboratory for Analytic Sciences is a partnership between the university and the National Security Agency. Any interesting projects you can share, or is it all top secret?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our portfolio, for the most part, is unclassified. One example is in areas of conflict, where the United States has lots of data. Right now, you\u2019ve got soldiers who have to watch all this video to see if they can find something \u201cinteresting.\u201d Do I see troop movement? Do I see guys with guns? One of the things we\u2019re looking at is how do you triage really big sets of data\u2009\u2014\u2009it\u2019s video, it\u2019s audio, it\u2019s text\u2009\u2014\u2009to find the stuff that might be interesting. Can you teach a computer to decide if something is not interesting? And then how do you make the computer work with the analyst? We do a lot of thinking about problems where we need that human\/machine team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does the Data Science Academy do?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the things the academy is doing is teaching a set of one-credit courses. The idea is that these are not just for computer science and statistics students. We\u2019re recognizing that data science is really impacting every discipline. It\u2019s changing how you do public health. It\u2019s changing how you do history.<\/p>\n"},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Meet Alyson Wilson, associate vice chancellor for national security and special research initiatives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":1576,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"source":"","ncst_custom_author":"","ncst_show_custom_author":false,"ncst_dynamicHeaderBlockName":"ncst\/default-post-header","ncst_dynamicHeaderData":"{\"showAuthor\":true,\"showDate\":true,\"showFeaturedVideo\":false,\"subtitle\":\"Meet Alyson Wilson, associate vice chancellor for national security and special research initiatives.\",\"displayCategoryID\":5,\"caption\":\"Photograph by Marc Hall \u201920 MA.\"}","ncst_content_audit_freq":"","ncst_content_audit_date":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[14,65,311,669,1097],"_ncst_magazine_issue":[],"displayCategory":{"term_id":5,"name":"Best Bets","slug":"best-bets","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":5,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":39,"filter":"raw"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1573"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1573"},{"taxonomy":"_ncst_magazine_issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_ncst_magazine_issue?post=1573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}