The mission of the Center for Data and Visualization Sciences is to partner with faculty, researchers, and students through consultation, instruction, co-curricular programming, and research assistance at various stages of the research data lifecycle.
The Center for Data and Visualization Sciences is located within Duke University Libraries and serves Duke University and Duke University Health System. Our team of consultants and interns offers support in data science, data sources, data management and curation, data visualization, and mapping and GIS (geographic information systems).
Consultations
We provide free short-term consultations to our patrons. CDVS staff members consult through email correspondence, and in-person or virtual meetings. Simply email askdata@duke.edu to ask a question or set up an appointment! We also offer walk-in consulting hours in the Brandaleone Lab for Data and Visualization Services on weekday afternoons, and during the school year our interns often have evening and weekend availability.
To learn more about our consulting model and how we can work together, see our CDVS Consulting Services page. If the needs of your project go beyond what we can provide in a few consultation sessions, we may still be able to provide our expertise within the structure of a Research Partnership or we can connect you with other Duke-based groups.
Instruction
Typically offered toward the beginning and middle of the fall and spring semesters, the Data and Visualization workshop series covers a range of tools and methods for data-driven research. These workshops are free and open to the public. We also provide more customized instruction for a variety of Duke groups including honors courses, graduate classes, and project teams. Customized instruction is available by request (askdata@duke.edu), pending staff member availability and expertise.
Staff
The Center for Data and Visualization Sciences consultants can help with a variety of data projects and related computing problems. Learn more about our areas of expertise below:
Joel Herndon
Director, Center for Data and Visualization SciencesEmail: joel.herndon@duke.edu
Web: https://joelherndon.info
Twitter: duke_data
I am the Director of the Center for Data and Visualization Sciences and act as a liaison with other data groups at Duke and beyond. Additionally, I serve on the management team of Duke Libraries' digital scholarship space: The Edge: The Ruppert Commons for Research, Technology, and Collaboration. My recent research focuses on how universities and research libraries are responding to a growing demand for data science services and training.
Jen Darragh
Research Data Management ConsultantEmail: jennifer.darragh@duke.edu
Expertise: Software (REDCap, Sharepoint, Open Science Framework (OSF), Piktochart), data management workflows, behavioral, social science and health data resources, restricted-use data acquisition, sensitive data management and data security.
I began working in the Center for Data and Visualization Sciences in 2017. My goal is to provide guidance and assistance to Duke researchers from all disciplines in managing their research data. Research data can be anything from spreadsheets, digital surrogates of primary resources, AV files, to compl
Ryan Denniston
Librarian for Public Policy and Political ScienceEmail: ryan.denniston@duke.edu
Expertise: Software (Stata, R, Microsoft Office and VBA programming, NVivo, ArcGIS), social science literature, data analysis, data sources
I currently serve as the subject librarian for public policy and political science and have since 2015. I received my PhD in sociology from Duke University in 2009 and worked part time for both the Center for Data and Visualization Sciences as an associate in research at the Sanford School from 2009-2015. My principal strengths are locating data sources, organization and analysis of data, and locating academic literature in the social sciences.
Drew Keener
Map and Geospatial Data SpecialistEmail: drew.keener@duke.edu
Expertise: Web mapping applications, spatial data analysis, map design, GIS software (ArcGIS Pro and QGIS), Tableau, R.
Sophia Lafferty-Hess
Research Data Management ConsultantEmail: sophia.lafferty.hess@duke.edu
Expertise: Software (Open Science Framework (OSF), Dataverse), data management, data sharing, data curation, digital preservation
I began working in the Center for Data and Visualization Sciences in 2017. I specialize in data management best practices including organizing data, documenting data, citing data, and archiving and sharing data. I have a background working in a social science data archive where I curated data for long-term preservation and reuse. I earned a BA in History and Classical Studies from the University of Arkansas and earned a Master of Science of Information Science and Master of Public Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
John Little
Data Science LibrarianEmail: john.little@duke.edu
Web: http://johnlittle.info
Zoom/Consultations/Schedule Me: https://is.gd/littleconsult
Expertise: Data science, R, RStudio, Tidyverse, data engineering, tidy data, data scraping, web scraping, data wrangling, data cleaning, text mining, sentiment analysis, APIs, version control (git/GitHub) and reproducibility, R Markdown report rendering including dashboards / slide decks (xaringan) / bookdown / blogdown / distill websites, visualization via ggplot2 and plotly
My current interests are using R, RStudio and the Tidyverse in a practical data science context. Additionally I help people manage data projects from gathering to cleaning, analysis to visualization; helping library users implement new data tools; assist the data-curious explore practical data science solutions.
Eric Monson
Data Visualization AnalystEmail: eric.monson@duke.edu
Zoom: https://duke.zoom.us/my/emonson (by appointment only)
Expertise: Software (Tableau, Python, Adobe Illustrator, Gephi, Git, Matlab, ParaView), broad range of scientific and humanities data and visualization, NoSQL databases, regular expressions, text analysis.
As the Data Visualization Analyst, I help students, faculty and staff with data visualization, organization, and processing for their research. My background is in the experimental sciences, where a PhD in Applied Physics led me to work on fluorescence microscopy, chemical nanosensors, and neuron-glial brain cell signaling. From 2007 until I joined CDVS in 2015, I worked as a Research Scientist here at Duke, collaborating with faculty and graduate students from Math to Computational Biology to Art History, helping them visualize and understand their data. In my current position, I enjoy introducing people to important skills they need but were never trained in, whether that means teaching visual design and communication to Scientists, or helping Humanists incorporate technology into their scholarship.
Lauren Nichols
Data Visualization AnalystEmail: lauren.nichols@duke.edu
Expertise: Data wrangling, data visualization, visual science communication (figures, talks, presentations, photography). Software: R, ArcGIS, QGIS, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop.
I help students, faculty and staff identify the stories they are trying to tell with their data and harness tools to tell compelling stories through data visualization. Prior to joining CDVS in 2023 I spent thirteen years as a researcher and project manager, using tools of bioinformatics, community ecology, and citizen science to study the ecology, evolution and biodiversity of human environments. As part of this work I facilitated collaborations with museums, researchers, teachers, engineers, data scientists, students, artists, Tribal Nations and city planners. Working on interdisciplinary teams and with a diversity of stakeholders highlighted the importance of effective communication.
McCall Pitcher
Data Visualization AnalystEmail: mccall.pitcher@duke.edu
Expertise: Data manipulation, visualization, and storytelling. Software: R, Excel, Adobe Illustrator.
I support faculty, students, and staff in conceptualizing, building, and presenting effective data visualizations. Prior to joining Duke, I taught R programming and data visualization to graduate students in the George Washington University’s graduate school of public policy, and worked at American Institutes for Research developing graphics for the National Center for Education Statistics and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Helenmary Sheridan
Research Data Management ConsultantEmail: helenmary.sheridan@duke.edu
Expertise: Data management and sharing plans; biomedical and health data; humanities data and digital resources, especially digital image resources; ethical considerations for sharing data and digital collections
I joined CDVS in 2024 as a data management consultant to help faculty, students, and staff manage, preserve, and share their research materials. Before coming to Duke, I was the data services librarian at the University of Pittsburgh Health Sciences Library System and have extensive experience working with data topics across the health disciplines. But I love working with humanities scholars, too: my BA is in art history, and much of my early work focused on the intersection of art, architecture, and geopolitical history as documented in historical image collections.
Mark Thomas
Librarian for Economics and GIS and Map SpecialistEmail: mark.thomas@duke.edu
Expertise: Software (ArcGIS, QGIS, Excel, online mapping tools), economic literature, data sources (all formats), maps
I have been working in the Center for Data and Visualization Sciences since its inception in 2007 and currently serve as the subject librarian for economics and business, geographic information systems (GIS), geography, maps and U.S. federal government documents. I began working at Perkins Library in 1996, and from 1990-1996, I worked as a librarian specializing in government documents and maps at Texas A&M University. I earned a Master of Library and Information Science at the University of Texas at Austin and a B.A. in Economics from Rice University.
Economics Department Data Interns
Our Economics Data Interns are current graduate students in the Duke Economics Department, and specialize especially with questions involving statistical software and econometric analysis.
Geoffrey Qu
InternExpertise: Software (Stata, R); data analysis; text analysis; econometrics; financial data
I'm a second-year M.A. in Analytical Political Economy student. I have working knowledge of Stata, R, and a basic knowledge of Python. I have a background working with financial and macro data from WRDS as well as performing basic machine-learning text analysis. I earned double bachelor's degrees in economics and international politics at Peking University.
Bill Zhao
InternExpertise: Stata, Excel, Python, R, Mathematica, MATLAB. Skills: applied econometrics, causal inference, data sets management.
I am a second year M.A. Economics student and am familiar with modern econometrics and causal inference techniques using cross-sectional or panel data with Stata. I can also provide help in data sets management, cleaning, reshaping, merging, and the interactions between Stata and Excel. I earned my B.A. in Economics from Fudan University (Shanghai).
Lisa Zheng
InternExpertise: Software (STATA, R, Python, PowerBI), data analysis, data visualization, healthcare data, econometrics
I'm a second year M.S. in Economics and Computation student. For software and computer languages, I’m familiar with STATA, R, Python, PowerBI, and SQL. I have worked with healthcare data cleaning, analysis, and visualization. Before Duke, I got my Bachelor degree in Economics and Mathematics from Boston University.
Questions? Email askdata@duke.edu and we’ll be happy to help!
