TIG Co-Chairs
Robin Wagner
Robin Wagner has worked in the environmental health and injury fields for over 25 years in government, university and non-profit settings. She spent 12 years at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) where she oversaw the development of CDC's first agency-wide research agenda and research portfolio assessment program. In 2008, she joined the U.S. National Institutes of Health as the Director of the Division of Statistical Analysis and Reporting in the Office of Extramural Research, Office of the Director. In September 2014, she returned to the CDC as the Chief Science Officer of the Office of Public Health Scientific Services. Dr. Wagner has a Ph.D. in Epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, a M.S. in Technology and Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Sc.B. in Neuroscience and Behavior from Brown University.
Dr. Joshua Schnell is Senior Innovation Policy Specialist at RTI, International. He has expertise in science planning and assessment, the evaluation of research and development (R&D) programs, and in science and technology (S&T) policy. Previously, he oversaw a team of analysts at Clarivate Analytics conducting program evaluations of research and training programs and developing tools for data-driven science management. Before joining Clarivate Analytics, Dr. Schnell directed the analytics group at a science management start-up in the Washington DC area, worked in research administration at Northwestern University, and was an S&T Policy Graduate Fellow at the US National Academies of Science. He holds a PhD from Northwestern University.
Program Co-Chairs
Gavin Reddick is the Chief Analyst at Researchfish. His background is quantitative and behaviourally focussed, covering a range of non-parametric models. Current and recent research evaluation projects include investigating the proximity and strength of links between funding and drug therapies, connections between research funding and Research Excellence Framework (REF) case studies, modelling the probability of inclusion in REF case studies, understanding collaborative research networks, and institutional assessments for a number of organisations.
Paula Fearon
Paula is the CEO of Lexical Intelligence, a role she has held since 2020. Prior to that she headed the analytic services division of Lexical, providing funding agencies and research administrators with the state-of-the-art tools and analyses needed to make informed, data-driven decisions. Paula served as Training Director in the Office of Portfolio Analysis at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where she implemented and led an innovative training program that continues to assist the scientific community in carrying out effective analyses of the NIH research portfolio. With over a decade of analytical experience, Paula’s expertise spans the fields of biomedical research, science policy, and portfolio analysis. Paula has been a member of AEA since 2015 and has served as a member at large on the RTD TIG since 2021.
Paula earned her B.Sc. in Biochemistry from the University of Edinburgh, and her Ph.D. from Newcastle University.
Communications
Brandon Sepulvado, Ph.D., is a Senior Research Methodologist and Data Scientist in the Methodology and Quantitative Social Sciences department at NORC at the University of Chicago, where he specializes in research assessment, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), and data infrastructure. Dr. Sepulvado’s work has been supported by prestigious awards from the National Science Foundation, a Fulbright fellowship, the Government of France, and the Countway Library of Medicine (Harvard University/Boston Medical Library) and has been published in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings across disciplines. He serves as a member of the South Big Data Innovation Hub’s Education & Workforce working group and the NIST Generative AI Public Work Group. Dr. Sepulvado previously served as inaugural Program Chair of the American Statistical Association’s Section on Text Analysis, has been elected to multiple section councils of the American Sociological Association, served as Secretary of the Washington Statistical Society, and has served as assistant editor for the American Sociological Review.
TIG Leader Emeritus
Dr. Gretchen Jordan is an independent consultant specializing in a systems view of innovation and program and evaluation design that considers the full range of research, development, and market adoption initiatives and the logical connections among them. Until December 2011 she was a Principal Member of the Technical Staff with Sandia National Laboratories working with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and the DOE Office of Science, on evaluation and performance measurement and innovative methods of assessing the effectiveness of research organizations. She was the North American Editor of Research Evaluation from 2008 to 2015, is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and co-founder (in 1995) and leader emeritus of the American Evaluation Association's Topical Interest Group on Research, Technology, and Development Evaluation. She has a Ph.D. in Economics. Prior to joining Sandia in 1991, Gretchen was Chairman of the Business Administration Department at the College of Santa Fe and staff member of U.S. Senator Pete V. Domenici and the Senate Budget Committee.
Dr. Brian Zuckerman brings expertise in the areas of program evaluation and scientometrics. His work at STPI focuses on Federal research and development program performance and agency-wide research portfolios, with an emphasis on biomedical research. Zuckerman has also analyzed Federal research and development data systems and statistical data collection programs. Before joining STPI, he was a principal at C-STPS, LLC, and at the Center for Science and Technology Policy of Abt Associates Inc. He is a co-chair of the Research, Technology, and Development Topical Interest Group of the American Evaluation Association. Zuckerman holds a BA in chemistry from Harvard College and a PhD in Technology, Management, and Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.