Dr. Janani Ravi, senior research associate for the Department of Pathobiology and Diagnostic Investigation at the MSU College of Veterinary Medicine, was awarded for her work with R-Ladies, a worldwide organization whose mission is to promote gender diversity in the R community.
Excerpted from awards program
R-Ladies East Lansing
Pathobiology and Diagnostic Investigation
Institute for Cyber-Enabled Research
Team award: Emerging Progress
The R-Ladies EL are committed to promoting gender diversity through education and community building. Led by Dr. Janani Ravi and Ms. Archer, R-Ladies EL is a local chapter of the R-Ladies Global and provides a safe space for women and gender-minorities in and around MSU to learn and discuss R (a popular statistical programming language) and data science. Over the last 18 months this grassroots organization has seen rapid growth, collectively training, connecting, and inspiring nearly 400 members of the broader MSU community.
R-Ladies EL has fundamentally changed how training in programming, statistics, and data science is done at MSU by providing a unique avenue for learning beyond traditional courses. They hosted the 2019 Women in Data Science East Lansing and contributed to the 2019 Girls in Engineering Day. This is above and beyond the other 15 events they have organized and hosted since their inception.
To make this happen, Dr. Ravi and Ms. Archer have in place policies and values for sustaining an inclusive environment event after event. Since R-Ladies EL is run not-for-profit without any systematic institutional financial support, they have actively sought and found sponsors for each event to keep R-Ladies a free learning community. Every R-Ladies event is an extraordinary representative cross-section of MSU and the surrounding community.
In this information age, data and computing are transforming genetic, biomedical, clinical, environmental, and social sciences and practice in innumerable ways. Taking full advantage of this information landscape requires a new set of cross-disciplinary skills in data-driven quantitative thinking along with knowledge in specific domains. The R-Ladies EL is playing the critical role of fostering interdisciplinary and interdepartmental connections at MSU to better address these common goals and promote complementary activities aimed at preparing the next generation of data scientists.
For their commitment to creating a gender-inclusive environment in which individuals can learn, thrive, and grow, Dr. Ravi and Ms. Archer, founders of the R-Ladies EL, are recognized with the Emerging Progress team award.