Dr. Valerie Nelson

Dr. Valerie Nelson is the Senior Data Architect at E Cyber7 Technologies, LLC. Prior to that, she served as the Deputy Technical Director of the Cryptographic Solutions Office and Applied Research Mathematician in the Cybersecurity Directorate at the National Security Agency where she is the first black female to graduate from its Applied Mathematics Program in 2004. She is one of eight graduates of the Department of Defense's Senior Technical Development Program's Class of 2020 where she focused on applications of Data Science to education and training, introduced a framework for instructional escape rooms to assess student competency and teaching effectiveness, and established guidelines for machine learning implementation. She also served as a Department Head for the Mathematics, Cryptanalysis and Data Science curricula at the National Cryptologic School and was an Initiative Lead for NSA's Data Science Literacy Initiative and the IC's Augmenting Intelligence using Machines (AIM) effort. She has served as adjunct faculty at George Washington University, Howard University, Morgan State University, and Prince George's Community College, and she completed a one-year special assignment at University of Maryland Baltimore County with its Instructional Technology Team, working with faculty and staff on using data analytics to inform instruction and strategy. She received her Bachelor's and Master's degrees in mathematics at Morgan State University, Ph.D. in Mathematics from Howard University as an Alliance for Graduate Education in the Professoriate (AGEP) and Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) fellow, and Graduate Certificate in Data Science at the University of Maryland College Park.