After a 20-year career in industry, Dr. Jennifer Van Mullekom joined Virginia Tech in 2016 as the Director of the Statistical Applications and Innovations Group (SAIG), where she is a Professor of Practice in the Department of Statistics. In addition to directing SAIG, she teaches collaboration skills and design of experiments to graduate students while serving as an active member of the global statistical practice community.
Previously, Van Mullekom was a Senior Consulting Statistician and Certified Six Sigma Master Black Belt in DuPont's Applied Statistics Group, supporting the DuPont Protection Technologies business. At DuPont, she provided statistical leadership to the Tyvek Medical Packaging Transition Project in the areas of product development, quality, commercialization, and regulatory. Her contributions to this project earned her a DuPont Engineering Excellence Award, one of the company’s highest honors. She continues to collaborate with DuPont on various material science projects as permitted by Virginia Tech’s external consulting policy.
Van Mullekom is active in professional societies, holding leadership roles in the American Statistical Association (ASA) and the American Society for Quality (ASQ). She holds two U.S. patents and has also worked at Lubrizol and Capital One. Van Mullekom is a regular participant at the Conference on Statistical Practice on topics such as communication, collaboration, leadership, and ethics. In 2024, she was honored with the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistical Consulting Mentoring Award for her role mentoring junior employees, colleagues, and students. She holds a master’s and doctorate in statistics from Virginia Tech and a bachelor’s in mathematics, as well as a bachelor’s in mathematics education from Concord University.
