Data Analytics Faculty

Danielle Edwards, M.S.
Assistant Professor of Practice in Information Systems
345 Aliber Hall | 515-271-3725 | danielle.edwards@drake.edu

Danielle Edwards has been working in the fields of business, IS, and education for over 20 years. She began her career at ITAGroup as an IT trainer and systems coordinator and later served at Wellmark BlueCross BlueShield as an applications and help desk specialist and an applications developer. Before joining Drake University, Danielle was a full-time faculty member at AIB College of Business where she co-developed a program to teach voice captioning, the first program of its kind in the country. She then served as an assistant dean of online education where she was instrumental in advancing online programs for the college. She has worked in the field of closed captioning and has trained dozens of captioners in her independent business. Danielle joined Drake University's Zimpleman College of Business in 2017, first as an adjunct instructor and now full-time as an Assistant Professor of Practice in Information Systems. Danielle teaches undergraduate courses in Microsoft Office, information systems, and database management.

Lendie Follett
Assistant Professor of Business Analytics
358 Aliber Hall | 515-271-4158 | lendie.follett@drake.edu

Dr. Follett is an Assistant Professor of Business Analytics at Drake University. She received her Ph.D in statistics from Iowa State University in 2016. She has a background in statistical consulting and in 2015 received the Dan Mowrey Consulting Excellence Award. Dr. Follett’s favorite projects are often interdisciplinary in nature and involve using data to answer complex research questions and make meaningful inference. Her research interests are in the areas of statistical graphics and Bayesian forecasting models, especially Bayesian VARs. She is particularly interested in stochastic volatility and the use of shrinkage and sparsity priors.

Wiranthe Herath, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Statistics
349 Aliber Hall | 515-271-3730 | wiranthe.herath@drake.edu

Dr. Herath is an Assistant Professor of Statistics at Drake University. He received his Ph.D. in Mathematics with a specialization in Statistics from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale in 2022. For his performance in both teaching and conducting research at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, he was awarded an outstanding graduate teaching award and a dissertation research award. His research interests are in the areas of dimension reduction methods of multivariate time series. He is mainly interested in the usage of the envelope methods and the reduced-rank methods in VAR models.

Malgorzata Kolotylo-Kulkarni
Assistant Professor of Information Management & Business Analytics
Aliber Hall | 515-271-2007 | malgorzata.koltylo-kulkarni@drake.edu

Malgorzata Kolotylo-Kulkarni has received her Ph.D. from Florida International University in Business Administration specializing in Management Information Systems. Her research interests include healthcare IS and cognitive IS, particularly, decision making, decision support systems, and information and knowledge management. In her dissertation she investigated the effectiveness of online decision tools within the contextual settings of decision scenarios, specifically the role that information delivery, decision environment, and user's cognition play in the effectiveness of those tools. She is particularly interested in consumers' decision processes in health insurance purchases.

Eric Manley
Associate Professor of Computer Science
327 Collier-Scripps | 515-271-2177 | eric.manley@drake.edu

Manley’s primary research area focuses on communication networks supporting big data. He has designed devices and algorithms for high-capacity optical networks allowing for more efficient transmission and fault tolerance. He has also developed techniques for using data mining in improved indoor localization based on observed wireless network data. He teaches a wide array of computer science classes including those on data structures and artificial intelligence. He was recently invited to participate on an NSF panel on "Big Data".

Bradley Meyer
Associate Professor of Management and International Business
312 Aliber Hall | 515-271-2490 | bradley.meyer@drake.edu

Meyer earned his Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Iowa State University in 1989 with a minor in Computer Science. He did contract programming for several departments at Iowa State University and has created numerous online educational games. His research interests are in process degradation, continuous improvement, and computer technology in education. He has recent publications in Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education and the Journal of Management. He is also a three-time winner of the Drake College of Business and Public Administration Outstanding Graduate Teacher Award. With respect to Data Analytics, Dr. Meyer's primary area of expertise lies in prescriptive analytics: optimization and simulation.

Alanah Mitchell
Associate Professor of Information Systems
353 Aliber Hall | 515-271-3724 | alanah.mitchell@drake.edu

Dr. Alanah Mitchell is an Associate Professor of Information Systems in the Department of Information Management and Business Analytics in the College of Business and Public Administration at Drake University. Her Ph.D. is in Information Technology from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Professor Mitchell’s research focuses on the design, implementation, and use of information and communication technologies for collaboration, specifically in global virtual teams. Additionally, she researches in areas of e-commerce, analytics, and pedagogy. She has published in such journals as Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Communications of the Association for Information Systems, DATA BASE, International Journal of e-Collaboration, and American Journal of Business as well as others. Professor Mitchell teaches database management. 

Meredith Moore
Assistant Professor of Computer Science
325 Collier-Scripps Hall
meredith.moore@drake.edu

Meredith Moore is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Drake University. Meredith obtained her B.S. in Computer Science and Neuroscience from Drake University in 2015. She then went on to get her Ph.D. from Arizona State University in Computer Science as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. Meredith’s research focuses on using machine learning to improve the accessibility of technology for individuals with disabilities. Specifically, Meredith’s dissertation focused on developing machine learning algorithms to improve the intelligibility of the speech of individuals with voice disorders.

Troy Strader
Aliber Distinguished Professor of Information Systems
332 Aliber Hall | 515-271-2753 | troy.strader@drake.edu

Strader received his Ph.D. in Business Administration (Information Systems) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1997. He teaches courses on electronic commerce strategy, website development, computer programming, database management, and XBRL. Dr. Strader’s research interests include information technology ethics, digital product management, online consumer behavior, information technology adoption, and the impact of the Internet and e-business on initial public offerings. He has published three books and more than sixty articles in academic and practitioner journals, books, and conference proceedings. Dr. Strader is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Drake Management Review, has served as CBPA Research Coordinator, and has twice won the CBPA faculty research award.

Timothy Urness
Professor of Computer Science
307 Collier-Scripps | 515-271-2118 | timothy.urness@drake.edu

Urness is dedicated to computer science education and has been recognized as Outstanding Teacher of the Year in the College of Arts and Sciences. His research in computer graphics and scientific visualization is interdisciplinary in nature and has resulted in numerous publications. His collaborations include professors and students from Drake University’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, Department of Biology, Department of Chemistry, as well as Drake’s College of Business and Public Administration.

Amy Vaughan
Associate Professor of Statistics
308 Aliber Hall | 515-271-2807 | amy.vaughan@drake.edu

Vaughan has earned a master’s in Sports Administration from Georgia Southern University and a Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Georgia.