Meet a TReNDS Expert: Molly Jahn

Written by TReNDS Staff

In the Meet TReNDS series, we introduce you to TReNDS’ experts, staff, and friends–leading individuals and organizations in the broader data for development community.

Meet…

TReNDS expert Molly Jahn, Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison

About Molly

Molly Jahn is a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she holds appointments in the Department of Agronomy, the Global Health Institute and the Nelson Institute, having served as the 12th Dean of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences and Director of the Wisconsin Experiment Station. She is an Adjunct Senior Research Scientist at Columbia University and Guest Scientist at Los Alamos National Lab. She served as Under Secretary of Research, Education and Economics at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the first Obama administration.

Q&A

TReNDS Staff: In your career, what area of data for development have you primarily focused on?
Molly Jahn: Generation, validation and curation of research data, federal statistics

What emerging area of data for development are you most eager to tackle in your own work?
Fusion approaches with incomplete physical and virtual information

What emerging area of data for development are you most eager to see addressed by the community at large?
The use of data and statistics to provide real time reflections of movement toward the SDGs

What is the most interesting use of data you’ve seen?
[In a recent paper,] machine learning applied to crop models to abstract testable hypotheses regarding the underlying physiological processes

What are you most eager to engage in with TReNDS?
New ways of describing risk formally, based on the challenge posed by the GAR 19

Read more about Molly Jahn on the UW-Madison website.