Bailey Ethridge
Mission Analyst — Space Mission Analysis Branch at NASA’s Langley Research Center
Graduated 2017
Can you describe your primary job duties and responsibilities in your current role?
I work as a mission analyst in the Space Mission Analysis Branch at NASA’s Langley Research Center. NASA conducts various types of space-borne missions, including planetary science, astrophysics, Earth science, and more. These missions consist of complex systems and architectures for which many alternatives exist and need to be evaluated with respect to benefit, cost, and risk. My job is to develop software, mathematical models, and other tools to aid strategic decision-making for both the human space flight and Earth science mission portfolios. Projects have included modeling satellite lifetimes to estimate probabilities of a gap in Earth science measurements, optimizing lunar cargo delivery schedules, and evaluating the affordability of different mission architectures.
Aside from my primary responsibilities, I have opportunities to engage in other activities such as writing research papers, mentoring interns, and organizing workshops on topics like optimization and uncertainty quantification. I am also currently pursuing a master’s degree in Computational Modeling and Simulation Engineering from Old Dominion University, which I will complete in the spring of 2025.
What key skills are essential for success in your current position?
The ability to take customers’ questions and translate them into problems that can be solved mathematically—documenting assumptions, finding the appropriate problem paradigm and solution technique, constructing an accurate formulation—is critical for my position. Effective communication of technical information to both technical and non-technical audiences is also essential. This requires both written and oral communication skills, data visualization, identifying the appropriate level of abstraction, and the ability to contextualize work.
How has your career evolved since graduating from UNCA?
My career path has been anything but linear. After graduating from UNCA in 2017, I had an internship doing data science for Mission Health. I tried a few other things on for size, from nursing school to insurance sales, and spent a year and a half working as a mentor at a residential mental health treatment program. In 2020, I began my career at NASA Langley as a contractor in the Aeronautics Systems Analysis Branch. My role involved doing data validation, analysis, and visualization for aeronautics portfolio management and later supporting development and testing of in-flight safety software for unmanned aerial vehicles. I made the switch from aeronautics to space in 2022 when I converted to a NASA civil servant position.
Which experiences at UNCA have been beneficial in your career path?
The understanding of probability and statistics I gained from taking three statistics courses at UNCA has been highly valuable for every project I have worked on at NASA. The Mathematics Seminar capstone course, as well as the graph theory research I conducted with Dr. Patrick Bahls, gave me the skills to learn new mathematical concepts outside of a classroom context and properly apply them to a problem of interest. Finally, programming has played a role in every job I have had, whether I am developing production software or simply automating processes to make my job easier. The Introductory Programming for Numeric Application course taught me foundational concepts that have allowed me to learn new languages as needed, from R to Python to C++.
Andrew Sparks
Research Biostatistician: University of Vermont
Graduated 2015
In your current employment, what are your job duties and responsibilities?
I co-publish a half dozen or so projects per year. The research that I conduct is mainly for CDC and NIH-grant funded projects through specific principal investigators at UVM college of medicine and medical center, specifically in Medicine/Hematology/Oncology.
My duties include implementing appropriate study designs, creating analytic plans, performing analysis, creating tables and figures, helping with presentations for these projects at national/international conferences and writing methods for those projects once they become manuscripts. Additionally, I am on grants that are analyzing multi-site electronic health record data (EHR) for adverse hospital-acquired events (VTE, bleeds), as well as another grant which is analysis of SEER-Medicare data for cancer patients. Currently we are working on what will be my 100th co-authored peer-reviewed publication.
What are some necessary skills in your current position?
Creating analytic plans, performing analysis, implementing appropriate study designs, supporting presentations for projects at national/international conferences.
How has your career progressed since you graduated from UNCA?
I applied to graduate school right out of UNCA (2014-2015), I had multiple offers, and decided on the University of Vermont (UVM) for a Master of Science program in Biostatistics. I worked as a teaching assistant for tuition for the 2 years I was there, and graduated May 2017.
I secured a position as a statistician at the George Washington University Medical Faculty Associates (GW MFA) in Washington, DC. I enjoyed my time there and learned a lot from the principal biostatistician, Dr. Richard Amdur. My time at GW MFA was very productive and fast-paced. Once I got my footing (about a year or so) I was co-authoring multiple peer-reviewed manuscript publications per month. This included implementing appropriate study designs, creating analytic plans, performing analysis, creating tables and figures, helping with presentations for these projects at national/international conferences and writing methods and results sections for those projects once they became manuscripts. I worked directly for the dept of surgery so there was a lot of surgical studies, but I was also able to do work for other departments – so I published with the departments of Surgery, Oncology, OBGYN, Neurology, Urology, Dermatology. I also had the opportunity to work with many levels of students and professionals; for example, most of my published works were with attending MDs and their residents/fellows, as well as medical students with their biostatistics questions as they first delved into research.
In 2020, I started my current position as Research Biostatistician at the University of Vermont (UVM.) still co-publish a half dozen or so projects per year, but they have tended to be higher impact and more drawn out. The research that I do now is mainly CDC and NIH-grant funded projects through specific principal investigators at UVM college of medicine and medical center, specifically in medicine/hematology/oncology and is a little more epidemiologically driven.
What experiences at UNCA were beneficial to your career path?
I would say the statistics lectures with SAS and/or R coding components, as well as just logic-based courses or proofs (like 280 or Real Analysis). Undergraduate research was very helpful as well. Most importantly, I felt like the Math/Stats Department at UNCA fostered a sense of community and students were challenged and rewarded by interacting with the curriculum. Office hours with faculty members as well as my time in the math lab heavily shaped and improved my learning experience. This helped me to couple persistence and practice outside of the classroom with the concepts of the curriculum to ultimately apply towards statistical applications in the workplace.
Grace Kirik
Business Consultant: Ernst & Young
Graduated 2019
In your current employment, what are your job duties and responsibilities?
I am a business consultant specializing in technology risk. My job involves performing IT audits, evaluating internal controls around business and IT procedures, and mitigating risks for a variety of businesses.
What are some necessary skills in your current position?
Each project I am on requires a different set of technical skills, but in general I have to have a basic understanding of business processes as well as IT applications used in business (such as SAP and SQL). The most necessary skills for my job, however, include project management, being able to communicate effectively with my team and clients, and being teachable at all times.
How has your career progressed since you graduated from UNCA?
I started at EY after graduating from UNCA, and my goal is to continue to advance in this career and become a manager at EY while also obtaining a Masters degree in data analytics in order to become more specialized within my field.
What experiences at UNCA were beneficial to your career path?
UNCA taught me to think critically and challenge assumptions, to push myself into new (and perhaps intimidating) fields, and to not hesitate to ask for help when it’s needed. I wouldn’t be where I am today without acting on those three things daily.
Tim Thorn
Senior Actuarial Analyst: Centene
Graduated 2018
In your current employment, what are your job duties and responsibilities?
My duties include research, analysis, and improvement of cost reporting processes, primarily for Medicaid and Medicare.
What are some necessary skills in your current position?
Computer Programming and Statistics
How has your career progressed since you graduated from UNCA?
This was my first role after my Masters in Applied Mathematics from Colorado University Boulder and passing the first couple of actuarial exams.
What experiences at UNCA were beneficial to your career path?
Statistics, programming, and undergraduate research. Linear Algebra ideas come into play, and just general mathematical thinking/problem solving approaches.
Levente Szabo
Senior Data Scientist: Katapult
Graduated 2018
In your current employment, what are your job duties and responsibilities?
I design and engineer software for point of sale consumer financing. Customers can apply for a line of credit with Katapult, as a member of the Risk team I work to ensure our credit scoring and fraud detection systems are robust and performant. My work ranges from designing and implementing new fraud rules and machine learning models, onboarding third party data providers, as well as analyzing financial portfolio data.
What are some necessary skills in your current position?
My job has a mix of necessary skills including Computer Science, Mathematics and Business knowledge. The majority of my work involves writing production code in Python with a SQL database backend, our software infrastructure is cloud based and uses AWS. I also use my Mathematics background including probability and statistics, linear algebra and a variety of machine learning models. Finally some financial background in risk management is necessary to understand some of the use cases.
How has your career progressed since you graduated from UNCA?
After studying Mathematics and Computer Science at UNCA I went to a PhD program for a year before transferring to an MS in Computer Science. During graduate school I learned algorithms, software engineering fundamentals and took machine learning courses. To get more hands-on experience, I interned at Novo Nordisk where I helped design a data analytics platform for targeted outreach regarding clinical trial research. After graduating I started working at Katapult and have been here ever since!
What experiences at UNCA were beneficial to your career path?
UNCA was a very supportive environment highly conducive to learning. You could really feel the enthusiasm of the Mathematics professors as they sought to make every class engaging. I also enjoyed the diversity of the curriculum, having glass blowing and topology class during the same afternoon was a great way to spark my creativity and not burnout with coursework.
Georgia Mason
Production Editor & Coordinator: Soomo Learning
Graduated 2014
In your current employment, what are your job duties and responsibilities?
I work at Soomo Learning, an online publisher of interactive college textbooks (“webtexts”), where I lead the editorial production team. Our small team of eagle-eyed editors is the final set of eyes before content is released to students and instructors. We’re responsible for ensuring everything—from grammar and syntax to interactive features and assessment questions—is accurate, functional, and flawless. My job involves copyediting and proofreading webtext content, marketing material, and communication with students and instructors; configuring custom features using HTML, JSON, and YAML (and using other tools like regular expressions and multi-cursor); training and guiding three other editors; and coordinating countless projects of varying scopes and overlapping deadlines.
What are some necessary skills in your current position?
First and foremost, attention to detail. My team is known for spotting the tiniest of errors, and our company relies on us to catch typos, inaccuracies, bias, inconsistent formatting, and more. As the team leader, I also need to have excellent organizational skills and deep knowledge of the content and levels of editing so I can determine priorities and reevaluate scope when deadlines are tight. Also, given our web-native content and interactive features, I need to be comfortable with technology and be able to notice and report bugs and unexpected behavior. Bug reports are probably the best example of how I use my math degree—they’re a lot like proofs. They must be logical, clear, and detailed, showing how to get from point A to point B so that the developers can understand and reproduce the issue. Clear written communication is also a must when I document complicated editorial tasks and processes for others to follow; it helps me minimize opportunities for human error and ensures other editors have the information they need to do their best work. Our team also does a lot of rote tasks, and my job often involves thinking through different ways to perform a task and determining which one is most efficient and has the least potential for error.
How has your career progressed since you graduated from UNCA?
After graduation, I was hired as a program coordinator in UNC Asheville’s Pre-College Outreach department, where I organized campus tours and activities for middle-school students through the Junior Bulldog Program. After helping grow the program and make it sustainable, I moved on to Soomo Learning, a small publisher of online college textbooks based in downtown Asheville. I had been interested in getting into the ed tech field because I’d likely be able to find a position that combined my love of math and logic, my knack for grammar and editing, and my comfort with technology. I started out at Soomo as an intern, helping out with everything from reading textbooks from a student’s perspective and providing feedback to working with the company’s software developers to test new interactive features. After a few months of interning, I moved to a full-time position on the instructor support team, where my experience recruiting faculty and staff to help with UNCA’s Junior Bulldog Program proved invaluable. Just over a year later, a spot opened up on Soomo’s editorial production team. I jumped at the opportunity to work on the kinds of editorial projects I had enjoyed as an intern. I started out as an assistant production editor with the main responsibility of proofreading textbooks. Because of my math background, I was also taught to configure custom features using HTML, JSON, and YAML. Three years later, I’m now leading the production team, which involves a perfect balance of editing, math, and organizational skills.
Michael Walker
Business Systems Analyst: First Citizens Bank
Graduated 2013
In your current employment, what are your job duties and responsibilities?
I currently work as a shared resource between the Consumer and Business Loan Origination Systems software teams at First Citizens. Generally speaking, my teams develop and configure the internal software that First Citizens uses to take applications, underwrite, originate, and book a large variety of loans for our customers. I personally work with our business partners to understand their requests/requirements, then work with my teams to turn those requirements into working software.
People don’t always understand what they want, and non-technical staff often think of things very differently than someone responsible for actually coding an app. I help bridge that gap, while also doing application configuration and SQL scripting/analysis where needed.
What are some necessary skills in your current position?
For me, it’s less about pre-existing skills coming into the job – most of our software is internal and not something you’d know from the outside. Instead, it’s about general technical knowledge and the ability to quickly come up to speed with systems you’ve never worked with before. Knowing how to break a hard problem down into component parts (something that Math certainly teaches) is a big deal. Beyond that, Microsoft Excel is way, way more useful than you’d imagine. If I could teach someone only one piece of software or skill, it would be expert-level Excel. After that, it would be SQL. With those two skills, you can do a ton of stuff. Soft skills are also huge – empathy, the ability to present information well (including remotely), keeping up with coworkers and understanding what they need.
How has your career progressed since you graduated from UNCA?
All over the place – I started as an eBanking customer support specialist at HomeTrust Bank in Asheville, then moved upward through the bank as opportunities came up. I moved into system administration, then project management as a Business Analyst, then over to Systems Analysis (more technical version of a BA). I took some time off when my daughter was born and was self-employed, then came to First Citizens as a BSA during the first week of the pandemic.
What experiences at UNCA were beneficial to your career path?
I don’t directly use almost anything that I learned at UNCA (I probably would struggle to work on anything from Calculus at this point to be honest), but the experience was wildly valuable. Getting to know my professors, learning how to focus and persist by doing absurdly hard math proofs, and understanding how to think analytically have been valuable from day one. Moreover, learning how to take what seems like a huge, hard problem and break it down into smaller, achievable chunks is beyond useful.
More broadly, having a math degree awarded a kinda-weird level of respect early in my career – I was pegged as a “numbers person”, which opened up analysis opportunities that paved the way for my future career.
Natalie Rich
Biostatistician: Labcorp Drug Development
Graduated 2010
In your current employment, what are your job duties and responsibilities?
I work in phase 1 clinical trials. In these trials, I work as part of a team to evaluate the safety of new pharmaceutical products. As the biostatistician, I am involved in all aspects of a trial, from designing the study and developing the statistical analysis plan to checking the completeness and accuracy of the data and performing the statistical analyses. At the completion of a clinical trial, I review and edit the clinical study report. This report includes an overview of the study conduct, safety findings, and conclusions from the trial.
What are some necessary skills in your current position?
A strong foundation in mathematics is essential for my job as a biostatistician. Good SAS programming skills are also important. My job involves a substantial amount of writing, reviewing, and editing, so these skills are key.
How has your career progressed since you graduated from UNCA?
After graduating from UNC Asheville, I moved to Colorado and joined AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC). After completing 10 months of service with NCCC, I attended Wake Forest University where I earned my MA in mathematics in 2013. I then enrolled in the mathematics PhD program at the University of Nebraska where I took a course in mathematical biology. This course was instrumental in my decision to ultimately pursue a career in biostatistics. As of January 2022, I have worked as a biostatistician in phase 1 clinical trials for 4.5 years. Most of these phase 1 studies have consisted of healthy normal volunteers. As I continue in this field, I look forward to working in a wider variety of clinical trials.
What experiences at UNCA were beneficial to your career path?
My undergraduate education in mathematics gave me an excellent foundation from which to build my career. Courses in real analysis and linear algebra have been especially helpful, as they provide the theoretical framework for the statistical methodologies that I use most frequently at work. Many of my professors emphasized the development of students’ mathematical writing skills, for which I will always be grateful. As a biostatistician, I use these skills on a daily basis to clearly and concisely describe complex technical procedures and conclusions of clinical trials.