Bio
Dan Hicks is an Associate Professor at UC Merced. They work in philosophy of science, science and technology studies (STS), and data science. Their primary academic research focuses on the role of ethical and political values in science and public scientific controversies, especially environmental controversies. They are also interested in bibliometrics, the use of statistics in scientific practice, and science policy.
In September 2017, Dr. Hicks joined the Data Science Initiative at UC Davis as a Postdoctoral Researcher. During my postdoc, they developed a portfolio of projects related to “academic institutional effectiveness.” These projects will drew on a variety of datasets — student enrollment data, faculty data such as grant applications, library or wifi use data, as well external data such as transcripts of government meetings and publication metadata — to address concrete questions about the inner workings and social impact of UC Davis. From 2012 until 2015 their research was on the controversy over genetically modified (GM) foods. From August 2015 to August 2016, they were a AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the US Environmental Protection Agency, where they worked on the scholarly and public reception of high-throughput toxicology research. This work gave them an opportunity to develop my skills in Python and R for bibliometrics, altmetrics, and text-mining. From August 2016 until August 2017, Dr. Hicks was a AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow with the National Robotics Initiative at the National Science Foundation.