Big Data Modeler Ross Gore to Appear on 'With Good Reason'
August 23, 2016
Ross Gore
Looking for clues in big data to help society led Ross Gore to look to the emerging West African country of Senegal.
As part of a competition sponsored by the Gates Foundation, the Old Dominion University modeling and simulation researcher used a database of anonymous, Senegalese cell phone records to determine how to best allocate resources for urgent health care facilities in that country.
Gore and his European collaborators won an award for practical ability of their research from the Gates Foundation Data for Development competition. He'll speak about the project on "With Good Reason," a public radio program spotlighting research at Virginia's public universities.
Gore, a research assistant professor at ODU's Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center, will appear at 7 a.m. on Sunday, March 27 on the program that is broadcast on WHRV-FM 89.5 in Hampton Roads. The show also airs in different timeslots at more than 50 public radio stations from coast to coast. Broadcast times are posted on the "With Good Reason" website.
Hosted by Sarah McConnell, "With Good Reason" is produced by the Charlottesville-based Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. The show was created more than 20 years ago to spotlight the groundbreaking research being done at Virginia's public universities.
"With Good Reason" has twice won the Gabriel Award for Best Documentary/Public Affairs Program. It also is the recipient of top honors from the Virginia Association of Broadcasters and a second-place award in the Public Radio News Directors competition.
The program will also feature biologist Emily Lilly of Virginia Military Institute, speaking about how our pets can make us sick; Anne Zajac from Virginia Tech, interviewed about an explosion in human cases of Lyme disease; and Peter Aiken of Virginia Commonwealth University, who will also discuss big data, and how governments need to do more than simply collect it.
Audio files of the full program and its companion news feature will be posted the week of the show on the "With Good Reason" website.
For the past decade Gore has looked in the world of big data for answers to society's complex problems, finding solutions in sometimes surprising places. A recent paper he co-authored looked at the relationship between Twitter content and the rates of obesity across the United States.