Senior Consulting Staff

Dr. William Matt Briggs is a Senior Statistician (CV) . William M. Briggs is an Adjunct Professor of Statistical Science at Cornell University and a Senior Statistician at JP Research. His background is in science and statistics (PhD, Statistics; MS, Atmospheric Science) and includes experience in the medical field as well as statistical consulting for various clients, from physicians to The Wall Street Journal. As a Research Scientist at New York Methodist Hospital, Dr. Briggs taught basic probability and statistics to Emergency Medicine and Surgical residents, consulted on departmental research projects, maintained several of the hospital’s study databases, and sat on the Institutional Review Committee as a guest member to review the statistics of proposed research. He was also an Assistant Professor of Statistics at Weill Medical College of Cornell University (2003-2007).

At Cornell, Dr. Briggs teaches students in the Masters Professional Studies program, with an emphasis on philosophy of science, epistemology, and foundational Bayesian theory and methods. His research experience and interests lie in prediction and forecast accuracy and usefulness; skill and cognitive biases in prediction; practical decision analysis; data mining; dynamical and ensemble forecasting; graphical data display; climate variability; philosophy of statistics and probability; Bayesian foundations and the nature of evidence; and Bayesian probability as it is used in physics and atmospheric science. He has taught courses in statistics, emphasizing both Bayesian and classical methods, and consulted and performed analyses on a wide array of studies. He is widely published.

Dr. Cal Davis is a Statistical Consultant. in the areas of STATISTICAL INFERENCE and its applications to automotive safety issues and DATA ANALYSIS, especially as applied to automotive safety issues. His engineering and statistical experience has extended to the automotive, nuclear power, aeronautic, railroad, bio-mechanical, and building industries and has involved problems in fracture mechanics, inspection reliability, epidemiology, mechanical engineering, automated design, and safety risk assessment. In his 20-plus years of aeronautic applications, Dr. Davis specialized in analysis of FATIGUE, FRACTURE, and CRACK GROWTH LIFE and RELIABILITY PREDICTION, including numerical methods for automated design.

For JP Research, Dr. Davis has developed techniques to extend registration data, assemble occupancy and exposure data, automate risk analysis, and set up SIGNIFICANCE TESTS and CONFIDENCE BOUNDS for accident risk. He has performed advanced statistical analyses for numerous JP Research studies using and extending NHTSA (FARS, SCI, NASS, GES) data, state accident data files, and R.L. Polk registration data. Other activities over past two decades include development of various special purpose Visual Basic for Applications programs (such as categorized data analysis and data analysis quality control) and consultation on acquisition and interpretation of data. Analyses of generalized linear models have included LINEAR and LOGISTIC REGRESSION, SURVIVAL ANALYSIS, MANTEL-HAENSZEL METHOD, EXACT TESTS and CONFIDENCE LIMITS, and OPTIMALITY CRITERIA for experiment design. He is also experienced in estimation for nonlinear models and structural equations.

Mickael Delahaye is our Chief Statistical Programmer/Analyst, and has extensive analytical experience primarily in the fields of statistics, econometrics, and finance. His background (MBA, Statistics and Audit; MA, Economics) includes trend analysis, creation of predictive models using data extraction routines (SQL/VBA), and creation of large databases containing current and historical data as well as statistical market data to facilitate tracking of asset values and forecast market availability. For JP Research, he writes programs and performs analyses, primarily utilizing data from the federal Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) and National Automotive Sampling System (NASS) databases and numerous state motor vehicle accident files.

Mr. Delahaye has conducted cost-effectiveness studies that included analyzing products, processes, budgets, and statistics, and he is experienced in cost management, forecast, and planning. As a teaching assistant at Staffordshire University, Mr. Delahaye was in charge of macroeconomics lectures and tutorials for first year students.

Jonathan Garcia is the company’s Senior Research Analyst, responsible for overseeing Technical Litigation Case Management for JP Research. Mr. Garcia has a Bachelor’s degree in economics and is experienced in litigation strategy, data analysis, records and document management, and literature research.

Working directly with the president, Mr. Garcia oversees and is ultimately responsible for all the research and litigation materials (papers, expert reports and exhibits) the company publishes, which work he accomplishes with the aid of a small staff of researchers and administrative assistants under his management.

Mr. Garcia also routinely, performs case management, scheduling, and review functions; preparing exhibits and graphics from programming results; and supporting contracts by analyzing and summarizing relevant technical literature, court documents, and depositions as well as implementing detailed case strategy for litigation matters. Mr. Garcia also reviews technical progress with the technical staff to ensure projects stay on track and that all participants remain up to date on findings, issues, and changes in technical direction; and assists in vehicle selection efforts (matching comparable vehicles and “sister” models, identifying when various components were standard/optional for specific make/models, etc.).

Dr. Xiaojie Li Statistical Programmer/Analyst (CV) . Dr.Xiaojie Li is a Statistical Programmer/Analyst specializing in qualitative analyses in the fields of science and education (PhD, Biology; MS, Statistics; MS, Forestry). An advanced SAS/STATA programmer with proficiency in data mining of complex, messy data sets, Dr. Li is highly experienced in retrieving, vetting, creating, compiling, documenting, and analyzing complicated national datasets consisting of millions of records and hundreds of variables. As the senior author for various large statistical analysis projects, Dr. Li has formulated analysis plans, overseen retrieval of raw data from clients, created and documented new variables, and drafted and revised reports for publication. Her background includes authoring statistical analysis reports under contract to the US Department of Education and making detailed technical reviews of others’ projects to ensure statistically sound and reliable quantitative analysis. For JP Research, her focus is the statistical analysis and interpretation of consumer product safety data.

Prior to joining JP Research, Dr. Li spent over a decade with the research and consulting firm MPR Associates, Inc. She was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of California, Davis, and a graduate research grant investigator in the Statistics Department at Cal State University, East Bay, and has researched and published on the topics of seed germination and dormancy.

Ravishankar Rajaraman is an Automotive Engineer with a Master's Degree from Lawrence Technological University. He has completed his Master's thesis on the topic "Role of Accident Investigation in USA and its Applicability to India" and has also performed projects in the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Automotive Headquarters (in Troy, Michigan) and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) Vehicle Research Center (in Ruckersville, Virginia) as part of his academic training. Mr. Rajaraman’s work experience includes two years in the insurance industry as a motor vehicle loss assessor and automotive trainer for Tata AIG General Insurance Company, where he has been recognized for his contributions in the area of vehicle loss estimation. He has been an active SAE-India student member and was awarded the SAE International Outstanding Student Officer Award for the year 2001-2002.

Most recently, Mr. Rajaraman has been supporting several significant projects undertaken collectively by JP Research and its wholly owned subsidiary, JP Research India Pvt. Ltd., to collect and create a “real world” accident database for various regions in India. These projects involve gathering accident-scene data, with the cooperation and assistance of the local police and insurance companies, for the city of Chennai and the area of NH-45 between Otteri and Acharapakam in a standardized format and inputting them into a database, an undertaking modelled on the methods used by the UK’s national Co-operative Crash Injury Study (CCIS) database (similar to NHTSA’s FARS and NASS databases in the US). Mr. Rajaraman has also helped produce JP Research/JPR India’s quarterly newsletter (SafetySpeak!) focusing on India-specific traffic safety research.