Kimberly F. Sellers, Ph.D. is the Head of the Department of Statistics at North Carolina State University. Further, as a Professor of Statistics, her research areas of interest and expertise are in generalized statistical methods involving count data that contain data dispersion; and in image analysis techniques, particularly low-level analyses including preprocessing, normalization, feature detection, and alignment. She is the author of the reference, The Conway-Maxwell Poisson Distribution (Cambridge University Press) which was released in March 2023. She is a frequently requested speaker (both nationally and internationally) for her research and/or service activities regarding increasing diversity in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) fields, particularly in Statistics, with regard to race/ethnicity and/or gender. Ongoing positions include roles at Georgetown University, and the U.S. Census Bureau.
Background
A DC-area native, Prof. Kimberly Sellers completed her BS and MA degrees in Mathematics at the University of Maryland College Park, and then obtained her PhD in Mathematical Statistics at The George Washington University partly through support as a Gates Millennium Scholar (one of the inaugural cohort recipients). Prof. Sellers held previous faculty positions at Carnegie Mellon University as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Statistics, the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine as an Assistant Professor of Biostatistics and Senior Scholar at the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics (CCEB), . Sellers is an Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute (ISI; since 2018), an American Statistical Association (ASA) Fellow (since 2021), and an Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) Fellow (since 2023). Meanwhile, she is an active contributor to efforts to diversify the fields of mathematical and statistical sciences, both with respect to gender and race/ethnicity. She is the inaugural chairperson of the ASA’s Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) Outreach Group (serving in 2021-2022, with service as Past-chairperson in 2023), was the 2017-2018 Chairperson for the ASA’s Committee on Women in Statistics, and continues as an Advisory Board member for the Black Doctoral Network since 2012.