Hannah Forsythe

forsytheh@michigan.gov • 517-528-8794 • hannahforsythe.weebly.com • github.com/HannahForsythe

Education
PhD, Linguistics | Michigan State University | May 2018
• Dissertation topic: child language development
• Graduate specialization in Cognitive Science

Data Science Fellowship | The Data Incubator | Aug 2020

• Created a Naïve Bayes classifier for improving speech recognition systems [ code ]

Experience
MDHHS DIVISION OF IMMUNIZATIONS Dec 2020 – present, 40hr/wk
Epidemiologist
• Extract immunization data from Michigan Care Improvement Registry
• Interpret and disseminate data for CDC, MDHHS staff, local health departments, and the public
• Publish research findings in academic journals and professional conferences
• Respond to FOIA and press requests
• Submit grant applications, grant-required deliverables, and ad-hoc reports
• Develop SAS, R and Power BI code for all of the above
• Maintain and debug code for Michigan’s COVID-19 vaccine dashboard [ link ]
• Data Quality lead
• Mentor junior employee (Mar 2022-present)

NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION POSTDOCTORAL PROGRAM Sept 2018 – Dec 2020, 40hr/wk
Principal Investigator, #SPRF1810159 Modeling the Stages of Pronoun Acquisition
• Published research on child language development, using mixed methods [ publications ]
• Study design: Lead investigator for 5 experimental and 2 observational studies
• Data management: Led 3-person team to develop a machine-readable database of parent-child speech
• Statistical modeling: Created 3 computational models in R simulating children’s pronoun
development; regression and chi-square analysis for 2 journal articles and 4 conference proceedings
• Administrative responsibilities: ensure confidentiality of personally identifiable data, obtain IRB
approval, submit grant-required reports, manage $148K budget over 2 years

ABC UNDERCAR PRODUCTS GROUP Apr 2018 – Sept 2018, 40hr/wk | Sept 2018-Jan 2020 5hr/wk
Bilingual Technical Writer
• Created 90 Spanish/English help articles and 20 videos explaining software to US and Mexico employees
• Performed quality control on keyword translations and software code, reducing developer time and
preventing user errors

MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY LANGUAGE ACQUISITION LAB May 2017 – Apr 2018, 20 hr/wk
Project Manager
• Study design: Collaborator in 2 observational studies
• Data analysis: Conducted statistical analysis and data visualization for 2 presentations and 2 conference
proceedings
• Data management: Managed a data enrichment team to produce 1-million+ word database for NSF Grant
#BCS1656133
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY Sept 2010 – May 2017, 20 hr/wk
Research and Teaching Assistant
• Study design: Lead investigator on 5 experimental studies
• Data analysis: Conducted statistical analysis and data visualization for 13 presentations, 2 conference
proceedings, and 1 book chapter
• Data management: Managed 6-person data enrichment teams to produce 600K-word database for NSF
Grant #RC062025
• Programming: Cleaned and anonymized above database using Python scripts
• Secured and managed $11K in grants for 3 field research trips
• Taught 26 credits of undergraduate Spanish and Linguistics
• Mentored 15 undergraduates (11 posters, 3 talks, 3 papers)

Technical Skills
DATA SCIENCE: Quantitative study design (observational and experimental)| Hypothesis testing (logistic,
linear and mixed effects regression, ANOVA, chi-square) | Data Visualization (ggplot2, matplotlib, PowerBI) |
Data Wrangling (tidyverse, pandas, web scraping) | Machine Learning (Naïve Bayes, Linear Regression)|Big
Data processing (Apache Spark, server-side SQL) | Git
PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES: R (advanced) |SAS (advanced)| SQL (advanced) | Python (intermediate) |
Bash (beginner) | HTML (beginner) | LaTeX (intermediate)