WUSS 2025 is pleased to welcome a large contingent of staff from SAS Institute to the conference. They’ll be presenting throughout the conference and will also be available in Resource Central. They’re eager to answer your questions and gather feedback from SAS users. Below are the SAS staff who will be featured at this year’s conference!
SAS Presenters at WUSS 2025
Matt Becker
WUSS 2025 Presentations:
- Prompt, Program, Submit: Generative AI for Faster SDTM, ADaM, and TLFs: The life sciences industry is seeing more requests for quick, compliant clinical trial submissions, which makes it even more important to improve programming operations. Generative artificial intelligence, especially large language models (LLMs), could change the way SDTM, ADaM, and TLF are created in a big way.
This session will investigate the practical applications of generative AI to automate and enhance critical clinical programming duties. From the mapping of raw data to SDTM domains to the crafting of ADaM specifications and the generation of boilerplate code or statistical summaries, we will analyze real-world use cases. These examples will demonstrate how to reduce manual effort while ensuring traceability and compliance. Additionally, we will illustrate the integration of these AI-driven procedures into SAS environments to improve productivity without compromising regulatory compliance.
Whether you’re a statistical programmer, data manager, or biostatistician, this session will help you reimagine what’s possible when human expertise meets machine intelligence.
Biography:
Matt Becker is an Advisory Industry Consultant with the SAS Health and Life Science division. Matt’s more than 30 years of life science experience includes over 8 years with SAS concentrating on next generation clinical trials, data management, analysis, advanced analytics, and deployment options in Life Science.
Jim Box
WUSS 2025 Presentations:
- Responsible use of Artificial Intelligence: Everybody is talking about AI and how to use it, but not enough people understand or are considering the potential problems that using AI can bring to society. Let’s talk about how AI systems are made, the types of problems they are being used to solve, and how to be more responsible in how we use it. We’ll talk about the sorts of questions you should be thinking about and asking any time you are interacting with an AI powered system.
- Managing Multiple R environments in SAS: You probably know that you can submit R code in SAS programs via PROC IML, but did you know you could have multiple R environments to choose from? I’ll show you some SAS code that allows you to switch between R environments, and how to create a listing of all of the packages and their versions in each environment.
- Getting started with SAS and Visual Studio Code: Attend this session to learn about the SAS Extension for Visual Studio Code which allows you to access libraries and tables, edit code, run code, and integrate SAS with other languages.
Biography:
Jim is a Principal Data Scientist in the Life Sciences Customer Advisory group at SAS, where he helps customers improve the value of their SAS environments. He’s a long-time SAS programmer, starting with version 6.08 in the last century. When’s he’s not writing code, he likes to experiment with new baking recipes.
Michele Ensor
WUSS 2025 Presentations:
- Microsoft Excel Proficiency with SAS® : Unlocking Data Insights and Dynamic Reporting: Join us for an immersive experience where data mastery meets reporting excellence! Discover the art of seamlessly reading and writing Excel data with SAS® , unlocking a realm of possibilities. From Excel data ingestion to crafting dynamic reports in Excel using SAS® , this session empowers you to navigate the convergence of SAS® and Excel. Learn efficient SAS® techniques to harness the power of both tools, ensuring a seamless workflow for comprehensive data analysis and reporting. Elevate your skills and gain the expertise needed to unleash the full potential of SAS® in creating impactful Excel reports.
Biography:
Since 1997, Ms. Michele Ensor has been part of SAS Education as an instructor, developer, manager, and adoption consultant. Michele teaches and develops programming, reporting, and solution courses. Her education background includes a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from University of Illinois and a Master of Business Administration from Clemson University.
Chris Hemedinger
WUSS 2025 Presentations:
- Git Integration with SAS Studio: Learn how to connect your GitHub profile to SAS Studio via HTTPS authentication. Clone a remote repository from your Git provider and view and manage files in SAS Studio via a local repository. Once the repository is accessible in SAS Studio, modify the files, commit changes, push updates to the remote repo, and view the modifications in both GitHub and SAS Studio.
Biography:
Chris Hemedinger is the Director of SAS User Engagement. His talented team looks after SAS online communities, SAS user groups, developer experience and GitHub, tech newsletters, expert webinars and tutorials. Chris is a recovering software developer who helped build popular SAS products such as SAS Enterprise Guide. Inexplicably, Chris is still coasting on the limited fame he earned as an author of SAS For Dummies. You can follow Chris on Twitter as @cjdinger.
Joe Madden
WUSS 2025 Presentations:
- Friends with Benefits: SAS® , SQL, R, and Python in SAS® Viya Workbench: This hands-on workshop shows learners how they can seamlessly switch from SAS® , SQL, R, and Python within a project – under the mantra of “use the right tool for the job”. Or, more simply put: use the tool you know. This activity follows a new policy analyst at the Department of Health and Human Services, who is tasked with understanding how the coronavirus, i.e., COVID19, impacted the labor supply of prime-aged women across the United States. Along that policy journey, you’ll also gain exposure to SAS® Viya Workbench, our latest-and-greatest coding environment!
- Get Your Ducks in a Row with SAS® Viya® Workbench, SAS® Data Maker and DuckDB: Are long-running jobs eating into your productivity? SAS Viya Workbench and SAS Data Maker are here to give you more time back in your day. SAS Viya Workbench is a developer-focused platform designed to empower data scientists who need to start small but scale efficiently. Whether you code in Python, R, or SAS, Viya Workbench provides a flexible, cloud-native environment that accelerates your workflow without compromising control or performance. This session will cover how Workbench and Data Maker can enable a developer to rapidly build and prototype against your existing data sources with very little setup required. We will show you how we are using DuckDB across our newest tools and highlight the 5x+ performance gains we are seeing when compared against traditional SAS techniques.
Biography:
Joe Madden is a Sr. Product Manager leading the launch of SAS Viya Workbench. He joined SAS in February 2022 with a primary focus on enabling customers with open-source solutions. Joe received an MBA from Boston University’s Questrom School of Business in 2017. He resides in Cambridge, MA with his wife and spends his free time running along the Charles River.
Danny Modlin
WUSS 2025 Presentations:
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Getting Started with SAS® Visual Analytics: This hands-on workshop shows you how to explore and visualize data with SAS® Visual Analytics. You learn how to access and prepare data, how to create interactive charts, reports, and maps to learn about your data, and how to build a preliminary predictive model. - PROC BGLIMM: The Smooth Transition to Bayesian Analysis: Many analysts are interested in taking models they currently have and transitioning them to the Bayesian realm. Most leap from their favorite classical analysis procedure directly to PROC MCMC, the general-purpose Bayesian procedure. This presentation will feature the BGLIMM procedure available since SAS/STAT 15.1. This will allow the participant to model non-normal responses and include random effects within their Bayesian approach. Discussion will include options of priors and availability of statements. Examples will include models originally written in PROCs REG, GLM, GLMSELECT, GENMOD, MIXED, and GLIMMIX.
Biography:
Danny Modlin is a Senior Analytical Training Consultant at SAS world headquarters in Cary, North Carolina. Since starting at SAS in 2011, Danny has taught and developed courses that span across many areas of statistics and SAS platforms, with a specialization in the application of Bayesian analyses. Danny received his Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Elon College (now Elon University), a Masters of Mathematics from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and a Masters of Statistics from North Carolina State University.
Prior to his time at SAS, Danny was a mathematics, statistics, and computer science teacher at the middle school, high school, and collegiate levels. Outside of SAS, Danny’s interests include local sports and meteorology.
Chevell Parker
WUSS 2025 Presentations:
- Next Level Reporting: ODS and Open Source: This presentation describes techniques used to get started with the Output Delivery System such as an introduction to the Output Delivery System basics. Also discussed include automating and making the most out of your ODS destinations. This document will also highlight the dynamic capabilities when using ODS. The document will further drill down on the popular ODS Excel destination and discuss highlights and limitations of this destination. Finally, this document will discuss open-source integration in SAS and Viya platforms and how this can be used to take your reporting to the next level. Concepts will focus on techniques geared to the data analyst and SAS programmer.
Biography:
Chevell is a Senior Principal Technical Support Engineer in the Programming Clients group within SAS Technical Support. His focus areas include the Output Delivery System, XML/JSON technologies, SAS Viya Jobs, and Open Source integration with SAS.
Melodie Rush
WUSS 2025 Presentations:
- Better (Prompt) Engineering: Leveraging ChatGPT to get started with SAS Coding: Learning a new coding language can be daunting. But, with your new personal research assistant, ChatGPT, it doesn’t have to be! In this session, we’ll meet you where you’re at as a coder. Perhaps you know R or Python well – and want to write SAS® code. Or perhaps you’re truly getting started with SAS® coding. Either way, learn how we can leverage LLMs to write the first round of code for us… or, better yet, have it help you understand code that someone has written. Either way, LLMs are a wonderful resource!
- SAS Viya for SAS 9.4 Users: Moving from SAS 9.4 to SAS Viya doesn’t mean starting over — it means unlocking new capabilities while building on what you already know. In this session, we’ll translate familiar SAS 9.4 skills into the modern Viya platform, highlighting key differences in architecture, processing, and programming. You’ll learn how to migrate your code, build and deploy machine learning models faster, and take advantage of powerful open-source integration. Whether you’re a programmer, analyst, or architect, this session will help you confidently embrace SAS Viya and get more done with less code, better performance, and smarter tools.
Think of this as the session for everything you wanted to know about SAS Viya… but didn’t know how to ask.
Biography:
With over a decade of experience in data analytics and machine learning, Melodie Rush brings a wealth of expertise to her role as an Customer Success Data Scientist. Her passion for solving complex problems with innovative technology has made her an essential member of the SAS team. Melodie’s work involves developing and deploying advanced models that help businesses make better decisions based on their data insights. She is constantly exploring new ways to improve analytical methods and technologies, striving to create systems that are faster, more accurate, and more efficient than ever before. In addition to her technical skills, Melodie is also known for her ability to communicate complex concepts in simple terms.
Charu Shankar
WUSS 2025 Presentations:
- Data Validation Using SAS Procedures: This session will focus on gathering both metadata & data from your SAS session to help make for faster code writing.
Make the best use of these multi-talented PROCS that are not just for statisticians. use them to advantage.
In this session the focus will be to learn to use interesting features of these 5 valuable PROCS: PROC FREQ, PROC MEANS, PROC UNIVARIATE, PROC SORT, PROC SQL
Biography:
SAS Senior Technical Trainer Charu Shankar teaches by engaging with logic, visuals and analogies to spark critical thinking. She interviews users to recommend the right SAS training.
Charu curates and teaches unique content in classrooms and with presentations at well over 100 international SAS user groups. She contributes to the SAS YouTube channel, SAS Global Forum, SAS Ask the Expert webinar series, Programmer Week, SAS Training Post Blog, and more. Charu’s areas of expertise include Base SAS programming, PROC SQL, SAS Viya, SAS efficiencies, SAS Enterprise Guide, and Tips & Tricks.
In her personal time, Charu is a Health & Life Coach, vegan chef and yoga instructor. She loves to explore Canadian natural trails with her rescue husky Miko.