SAN LUIS OBISPO — Three new faculty fellows join a cohort of 22 Cal Poly faculty members who incorporate entrepreneurship into their coursework, act as ambassadors for the CIE and help students navigate entrepreneurial endeavors. 

“CIE Faculty Fellows form the backbone of support for the CIE on-campus,” said Lynn Metcalf, director of the Faculty Fellows program and a professor of entrepreneurship at Cal Poly. “Together, they are promoting a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship.”

This year’s additions, who come from the College of Engineering (CENG), the College of Science and Math (CSM) and the Orfalea College of Business (OCOB) respectively, will increase interdisciplinary collaboration within the Faculty Fellows program.

This year’s newest faculty fellows all have backgrounds in data science and share a desire to engage students in innovation and entrepreneurship through data science.

“I’m excited by their excitement in being faculty fellows and their interest in collaborating across disciplines,” Metcalf said. “All three have a track record of accomplishment in their own fields and experience with and interest in startups.”

This year’s faculty fellows include:

— Paul Anderson, an associate professor of computer science and software engineering and the director of Cal Poly’s Data Science Research Group, which specializes in developing and applying data mining, machine learning and artificial intelligence in the biomedical field.

Anderson said he looks forward to imparting his students with an entrepreneurial skill set that will help them navigate rapidly evolving technology institutions.

— Jean Davidson, an assistant professor of biological sciences and the co-director of both the Computational Molecular Sciences Center and the Bioinformatics Research Group, a cloud-based computational research laboratory with bioinformatics and data science pipelines.

Davidson said she is excited to expand her interdisciplinary collaboration through her role as a faculty fellow and looks forward to introducing her students to entrepreneurship.

— Katya Vasilaky, an assistant professor of economics and an applied microeconomist whose interest in entrepreneurship began when she was living in Uganda, working for the World Bank and the Clinton Health Access Initiative.

Vasilaky said she hopes to use her role as a faculty fellow to address global economic inequities through interdisciplinary innovation. She believes global issues can be solved when motivated and clever minds leverage expertise from multiple disciplines.