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Sheldon Jacobson on Muck Rack

Sheldon Jacobson

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  • Computer Science Professor and Data Science Communicator, Freelance
Champaign
As seen in: CNN, MSN, MSN Canada, MSN Ireland, Yahoo Life, Scribd, The Washington Post, USA Today, Wiley Online Library, Yahoo Canada and
Covers:  Aviation & airport security, data science, artificial intelligence, risk analysis, decision-making under uncertainty, gerrymandering, gun safety, air travel, sports gambling, lotteries.
CS Professor, PhD, Data Guy, Risk Analysis, AI, Sports Analytics, Airport Security, Travel, Public Policy & Health, Algorithmic Redistricting, Security.
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Sheldon Jacobson’s Biography

Sheldon H. Jacobson, PhD is a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. He is an academic whose research specialty is data-science and risk-based decision-making under uncertainty.

Dr. Jacobson has authored/co-authored over 250 peer-reviewed research papers and book chapters during his career. He has won numerous research grants from the National Science Foundation and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to support his research. He has graduated 30 PhD students during his career, helping to launch their own careers in academia, government, and industry. Earlier in his career, he was on assignment to the National Science Foundation as a program director.

He has won numerous awards for his research, including a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship and the 2020 Institute for Operations Research and the Management Science (INFORMS) Saul Gass Expository Writing Award for exceptional clarity in his writings. He is a Fellow of three professional organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). More information can be found at his web site https://shj.cs.illinois.edu/.

Dr. Jacobson has studied aviation security for over 30 years, obtaining a deep understanding of how aviation security systems function and many of the nuances that enhance or degrade their performance. His research on risk-based decision-making under uncertainty provided the technical foundations for TSA PreCheck. He uses this knowledge to build bridges with other societal issues, like gun safety, offering insights that are rooted in risk-based security while offering solutions that fill a void in discussions on this issue. He provides insights into aviation security that few travelers are aware of, and provides lucid interpretations of information shared by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) that give travelers a moment of pause and reflection.

Dr. Jacobson’s writings appear regularly in The Hill (Washington). He has also written for USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, the Atlanta Constitution Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Dallas Morning News, the New York Daily News, the Washington Post, and the Philadelphia Inquirer, and through news services, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Miami Herald, the Mercury News, and many more.

His motivation to write is driven by his desire to share his knowledge of data and risk analysis to provide insights into problems as diverse as aviation security, air travel, gerrymandering, sports gambling, lotteries, supply chains, gun safety, and artificial intelligence (including biometrics like facial recognition). Many of these writings have their genesis in his own research, providing a unique avenue for data-science communication that few journalists can offer.