Carolina is a principal statistician at NORC at the University of Chicago. She conducts research and consulting on the modeling of survey data and related topics and is widely recognized for her expertise in small area estimation (SAE).

At NORC, Carolina was the lead statistician in a project that focused on producing small area estimates of hearing loss for counties in the United States for population subgroups, and developed the methodology for producing small area estimates of entrepreneurship types at the MSA and state level. She has also worked on the estimation of anemia for Peruvian provinces, on providing recommendations on sampling strategies to the National Agricultural Statistical Service and has tackled various important methodological issues related to SAE, among other projects.

Before joining NORC, Carolina spent several years working at the U.S. Census Bureau’s Center for Statistical Research and Methodology (CSRM), where she last served as group leader for the Small Area Estimation Group. At CSRM, she developed innovative statistical methodologies for important applications in official statistics, demographics, and public health. Carolina has published several peer-reviewed papers and has delivered dozens of invited talks on survey statistics in international conferences, universities, private companies, and federal agencies. These included widely attended webinars organized by the United Nations (UN) and by the American Statistical Association’s Committee on International Relations in Statistics and Statistics Without Borders. She has taught SAE for the Joint Program of Survey Methodology at the University of Maryland and has served as an SAE expert in multiple capacity-building events in developing countries, organized by various international organizations.

Carolina is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute (ISI) and holds several leadership appointments in the statistics community. She is guest editor of the Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology, past chair of the Washington Statistical Society’s Morris Hansen Lecture Committee, past chair of the American Statistical Association’s (ASA) Committee on International Relations in Statistics, a member of the Program Committee for the 2024 SAE Conference in Turin, Italy and a member of the ASA Edward C. Bryant Scholarship Committee. In the past, she has served as associate editor of the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A (JRSS-A), as a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for the 2023/2024 SAE meeting in Lima, Peru, and as chair of the Gertrude Cox Scholarship Committee, among various other roles.