Can the Participant Speak Beyond Likert? Natural Language Processing in Public Health 

Virtual Dean’s Grand Rounds

Diana Thomas, Ph.D., F.T.O.S
Can the Participant Speak Beyond Likert? Natural Language Processing in Public Health 

Diana M. Thomas received her Ph.D. from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1996. She then completed a National Research Council funded post-doctoral fellowship at the United States Military Academy and the Army Research Laboratory. In 2000, she joined the faculty of the Montclair State University where she was a professor of mathematics and the director of the Montclair State University Center for Quantitative Obesity Research. Dr. Thomas is currently a professor of mathematical sciences at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Dr. Thomas has been an active research mathematician for over 25 years with a focus on nutrition and obesity related modeling. She has worked with large complex and high dimensional datasets and co-invented the remote weight loss program, SmartLoss™, which has been clinically applied world-wide to guide and improve individual patient weight loss adherence through smartphone technology. Dr. Thomas has published over 150 peer-reviewed articles and has led the development of over 10 freely accessible health calculators. She is an associate editor for the world’s top ranked journal for original research in nutrition, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and co-edits the series “Best (but oft-forgotten) practices”, which consists of methodologic commentaries or statistical tutorials. She also serves as an editor for Nutrition and Diabetes and the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. She has held governance positions in the Obesity Society, the American Society of Nutrition, and the Mathematical Association of America. Dr. Thomas holds the 2012 Mathematical Association of American of NJ Distinguished Teaching Award and the 2015 Obesity Society George Bray Founder’s Award.