Carolyn Anderson (Ph.D. University of Illinois, 1993) is a professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in the Department of Educational Psychology with affiliations in the departments of Psychology and Statistics.  Her research lies at the intersection of multivariate models for categorical data and psychometrics.   She has developed and studied alternative formulations of item response models that are based on statistical graphical models.  The models are special cases of loglinear models and are formative measurement models.  She has proposed estimation methods for these models that rely on standard estimation methodology, which permits estimation of complex models.  Dr. Anderson has published numerous papers on this topic in top journals in the field and her scholarship in this area is pertinent and integral to the proposed research.   She has also published work on soical networks, longitudinal data, and multilevel models.  Dr. Anderson frequently collaborates both on methodological papers and on projects with colleagues in educational psychology, psychology, computer science, and electrical and computer egnieering.