Olushina Olawale Awe

Professor of Statistics, Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA)
Olushina Olawale Awe is an experienced data scientist and statistician. He is the vice-president of Global Statistical Engagements of the USAID-sponsored LISA 2020 Global Network with headquarters in Colorado, USA, and over 35 centres in 10 developing countries. Prior to this, he had considerable experience in the industry, research and academic sectors. In 2013, he was the only statistics leader selected out of 108 applicants from 34 developing countries to be trained in the United States as a Google-funded Statistics and Data Science Ambassador. He has over 15 years of professional working experience spanning international development, public and private sectors, both in the United States and Africa. As a global statistics leader, he has overseen several data management and capacity-building activities across many statistical training centres and sub-regional organizations. He has mentored several statistical offices/training centers in developing countries like Brazil, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Ghana, Ethiopia, and India. He established the first LISA 2020 Statistics and Data Science Laboratory in Africa in 2014. He has travelled widely and presented academic papers on various topics in statistics in five continents. He has also paid short academic visits to top universities like Oxford University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of London, LSE, Virginia Tech, UNICAMP, USP, UFBA Brazil, Harvard University, MIT etc. He is a country coordinator (Nigeria) of the International Statistical Literacy Program. He is an elected fellow of the International Statistical Institute (ISI), an African Academy of Sciences affiliate member. He was recently elected as a vice-president of the International Association for Statistics Education, having served on the council of the International Society for Business and Industrial Statistics for two terms. He has published over 70 research articles in local and international journals in the areas of applied statistics, computational statistics, econometrics, machine learning, time series analysis, data science, and statistics education. His recent book (with Kim Love and Eric Vance) is titled Promoting Statistical Practice and Collaboration in Developing Countries. He is a dynamic, creative, and innovative professional who is highly motivated by new innovations.