Elaine Beebe

Two data points stood out among the figures presented by Talitha Washington during the AMS Einstein Public Lecture, April 6 at Howard University.

The first was that the United States will be shorthanded three million workers in STEM fields by 2030. The second: African Americans comprise 12 percent of the US population but only three percent of data analytics professionals. 

Those numbers are a problem, Washington told the audience. “And as a mathematician, I like to solve problems.”

Credit: AMS Communications

Washington is director and lead principal investigator of the National Data Science Alliance (NDSA) at Clark Atlanta University, where she is a professor of mathematics.

Funded by the National Science Foundation in 2022, Washington leads a national alliance of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) seeking to increase the number of Black people with expertise in data science by at least 20,000 by 2027.

She also directs the four-year-old Data Science Initiative, Atlanta University Center (AUC) Consortium, which aims to expand data science research and curriculum across HBCUs, stewarded by AUC institutions (Clark Atlanta, Morehouse College, Morehouse School of Medicine, and Spelman College).

And in 2001, “the year I graduated, six Black women got PhDs in math,” she said. “I think I know all of them.”

The Einstein Public Lecture was featured at the well-attended AMS 2024 Spring Sectional Meeting, hosted at Howard. During her lecture, Washington showed a short film of activities in data science that have drawn students as young as pre-college students. She spoke at length about the need for educational collaboration with industry and entrepreneurs. “We need to bring industry knowledge to classrooms,” she said. “For the continuity of the workforce; half of students are going into industry, et cetera, not academia.”

Walking the audience through the work of the alliance, Washington also mentioned specific initiatives and grant opportunities. “The Microsoft mini grant is still open for applications,” she noted, offering a slide with more information. “It’s an on-ramp to other grant-funded programs.”

After her talk, Washington fielded questions; the first one was on how to apply for that grant. “If you’re excited about the project, let that come through in your writing,” she counseled.

Credit: AMS Communications

Another angle of Washington’s work is to expand data science research that advocates for social justice, striving to eliminate bias. This resonated with two Howard undergraduate mathematics students in the audience. “Seeing Dr. Washington was amazing,” said Cheyene Henry. “I believe anybody can study anything.”

Added Judene Josephs, an economics major minoring in math, “It places us in the room.”

Henry said, “It’s putting us behind the table.”

Washington couldn’t have hoped for better audience feedback.

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