Askar Choudhury is a Professor of Management & Quantitative Methods at the College of Business, Illinois State University, USA. He maintains an active research agenda that include prediction modeling (forecasting), development of statistical methodology for assessing effects of interventions and environmental exposures, service demand for technology operations, and agricultural index insurance. He has published fifty plus (50) articles in referred academic journals including Journal of Insurance Issues, Journal of Econometrics, The American Statistician, Communications in Statistics, Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation, Archives of Environmental Health, and Academy of Accounting and Financial Studies Journal. He has many scholarly presentations at the national/international conferences. In the real world application of statistical methods, he has developed a distance-minimizing “Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP)” algorithm for the Next Generation Logistics (NGL), Chicago, USA; implemented statistical analysis to assess the effect of structural change in the Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU) program of American Institute of CPCU (AICPCU), Malvern, PA, USA; developed a 'Predictive Model' to estimate resources demand for the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation (ASRC), Alaska, USA for efficient resource planning; and created a research base for developing an alternative model of financial risk to credit score for Country Insurance, Bloomington, USA. He holds his Ph.D. in Business Administration (with concentration in business statistics) from Arizona State University, USA and a masters in mathematical statistics from Simon Fraser University, Canada. He teaches in the areas of business statistics, forecasting, operations management and graduate quantitative methods courses. Dr. Choudhury has and continue to serve on several thesis committees and supervises graduate students on their Master’s project. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago. He has received the "College of Business Distinguished Research Award" in 2005 and 2012. He also loves to go fly fishing in remote Alaskan rivers.
I am Lena Choudhury and my primary passion in my professional life lies in understanding the complex relationship between our changing climate and its effects on different sectors of our lives. I have been working on this endeavor for many years as a teacher, researcher, and a consultant. I have taught courses in general ecology, environmental biology, and field ecology research course dealing with establishment of wetlands to coring of glacier ice for understanding the history of climatic changes. I have and is continuing to work on consultations in the areas of treeline change, establishments of prairie ecosystem, wetland establishment and decontamination, and agricultural productivity. I have continued with an active research platform that examines the effect of global climate change in the areas of treeline changes, alpine ecosystems, prairie ecosystems, agriculture, and wetland establishments. I have published numerous articles in the academic journals that includes Ecoscience, Journal of Human Environment, Canadian Journal of Forestry, North American Association for Environmental Education, Journal of Insurance Issues, and Journal of Economics and Economic Education Research. I have received research awards from Arctic Sciences Institute and North American Association for Environmental Education for my research dealing with increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and its effect on alpine ecosystems. In my spare time, I am the founding president of a non-profit organization that helps figure skaters of all ages to advance in the world of figure skating. I also serve on the boards of YWCA, and Citizen’s advisory board of the local school district. My educational background includes a MS in Environmental Ecology from University of Alaska Anchorage, and BS in Biological Sciences, and BA in Anthropology.