Jennifer "Jenny" Bryan is a

data scientist Data science is an interdisciplinary field that uses scientific methods, processes, algorithms and systems to extract or extrapolate knowledge and insights from noisy, structured and unstructured data, and apply knowledge from data across a bro ...

and an

associate professor Associate professor is an academic title with two principal meanings: in the North American system and that of the ''Commonwealth system''. Overview In the ''North American system'', used in the United States and many other countries, it is a ...

of statistics at the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public university, public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks a ...

where she developed the Master in Data Science Program. She is a statistician and software engineer at

RStudio RStudio is an integrated development environment for R, a programming language for statistical computing and graphics. It is available in two formats: RStudio Desktop is a regular desktop application while RStudio Server runs on a remote server ...

from Vancouver, Canada and is known for creating open source tools which connect R to Google Sheets and Google Drive.

Education

Bryan earned her

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

Economics Economics () is the social science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and intera ...

and

German literature German literature () comprises those literature, literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German parts of Switzerland and Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, South Tyrol in Italy a ...

from

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

in 1992 and her

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...

Biostatistics Biostatistics (also known as biometry) are the development and application of statistical methods to a wide range of topics in biology. It encompasses the design of biological experiments, the collection and analysis of data from those experime ...

from

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

in 2001.

Career

As an

statistics Statistics (from German language, German: ''wikt:Statistik#German, Statistik'', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of ...

at the

, Bryan worked on biostatistics with a focus on gene expression and microarray data. Notable projects to which she has contributed include the quantification of photomotor responses in larval

zebrafish The zebrafish (''Danio rerio'') is a freshwater fish belonging to the minnow family ( Cyprinidae) of the order Cypriniformes. Native to South Asia, it is a popular aquarium fish, frequently sold under the trade name zebra danio (and thus often ...

, the development of an assay system in the multicellular animal ''

Caenorhabditis elegans ''Caenorhabditis elegans'' () is a free-living transparent nematode about 1 mm in length that lives in temperate soil environments. It is the type species of its genus. The name is a blend of the Greek ''caeno-'' (recent), ''rhabditis'' (ro ...

'' to test genetic interactions causing synthetic lethality in somatic cells, and a novel yeast-based model to search for modifier genes involved in

cystic fibrosis Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a rare genetic disorder that affects mostly the lungs, but also the pancreas, liver, kidneys, and intestine. Long-term issues include difficulty breathing and coughing up mucus as a result of frequent lung infections. O ...

. Beyond biostatistics, Bryan has also contributed to medoids-based clustering methods. Her general science contributions include a manifesto published in '' PLOS One'' on good practices for scientific computing and an introduction to the Git version control system for research data analysis. Bryan's teaching activities at UBC included development of the Master of Data Science Program and new materials for the STAT 545 course. Under Bryan's direction, the STAT 545 course became notable as an early example of a data science course taught in a statistics program. It is also notable for its focus on teaching using modern R packages, Git and

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...

, its extensive sharing of teaching materials openly online, and its strong emphasis on practical data cleaning, exploration, and visualization skills, rather than algorithms and theory. As of late 2016 Bryan is on leave from her UBC position and is working at

with a team led by Hadley Wickham. Bryan has had experience with S and R since 1996. She is known for her open source contributions in R. Influential contributions include the use of

Lego Lego ( , ; stylized as LEGO) is a line of plastic construction toys that are manufactured by The Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. The company's flagship product, Lego, consists of variously colored interlocking ...

and the concept of data rectangling for explaining programming concepts, reproducible research, and advice on project and workflow organisation. Bryan is well known for her work on efficient methods of working in spreadsheets, and the connection between R and spreadsheet software such as

Excel ExCeL London (an abbreviation for Exhibition Centre London) is an exhibition centre, international convention centre and former hospital in the Custom House area of Newham, East London. It is situated on a site on the northern quay of the ...

and Google Sheets. She is the primary developer of the R package googlesheets, that connects R to the Google Sheets service, and googledrive, an R package for interfacing between R and Google Drive. Bryan is known for her work in teaching, her contributions to R packages, and her involvement with the leadership committee a
rOpenSci
She is also part of th
R FoundationForwards
task force and a member of the editorial board of

BMC Bioinformatics ''BMC Bioinformatics'' is a peer-reviewed open access scientific journal covering bioinformatics and computational biology published by BioMed Central. It was established in 2000, and has been one of the fastest growing and most successful journals ...

. Previously, she worked as an Associate at the

Boston Consulting Group Boston Consulting Group, Inc. (BCG) is an American global management consulting firm founded in 1963 and headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. It is one of the Big Three (or MBB, the world’s three largest management consulting firms by rev ...

in Boston, MA.

Personal life

Bryan lives with her husband, three children, and dog, Toby.

References

External links

".rprofile: Jenny Bryan"
– ROpenSci Interview

– Happy Git and GitHub for the useR Contributors Page
"Jennifer (Jenny) Bryan"
– GitHub Profile
"Jenny Bryan: 'You need a huge tolerance for ambiguity'"
- StatsChat Interview {{DEFAULTSORT:Bryan, Jenny Year of birth missing (living people) Living people University of California, Berkeley alumni Yale College alumni American women statisticians Canadian software engineers R (programming language) people Boston Consulting Group people Academic staff of the University of British Columbia 21st-century American women academics 21st-century American academics 21st-century American mathematicians American statisticians