Kirsty Weitzel

Kirsty Weitzel is a data scientist with experience in text analytics, data visualization, survey science, and computer science.

Since joining RTI in 2020, Kirsty has been a part of a vast array of projects, including a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-funded initiative researching firearm violence. This effort shed light on the impact of mass shootings on the broader community and has been featured in national media outlets. She has expertise in data visualization, releasing multiple Tableau dashboards focusing on public health as part of the Georgia Strategic Prevention System Data Warehouse project. In addition, Kirsty was the lead data scientist on an Office for Victims of Crime (OVC)-funded project that developed EVVA, a chatbot that provides resources and support to victims of residential burglary. Outside of these partnerships with federal agencies, Kirsty has worked on initiatives that involve social network analysis, machine learning model assessment, and computer vision.

Kirsty is a proponent of open source software, as she developed and released a python package called heartbeatpy, which is used to detect individual-level response variation in Likert survey question data.

Prior to RTI, she was a data scientist at Elder Research, developing data science solutions for clients in consumer-packaged goods, quick-service dining, software, and logistics. She also worked on SBIR-funded projects for the CDC and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.