Daniela M. Witten is an American biostatistician. She is a professor and the Dorothy Gilford Endowed Chair of Mathematical Statistics at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW and informally U-Dub or U Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast of the Uni ...

. Her research investigates the use of

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

to understand high-dimensional data.

Early life and education

Witten studied mathematics and biology at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

, graduating in 2005. She remained there for her postgraduate research, earning a master's degree in statistics in 2006. She was awarded the

American Statistical Association The American Statistical Association (ASA) is the main professional organization for statisticians and related professionals in the United States. It was founded in Boston, Massachusetts, on November 27, 1839, and is the second-oldest continuous ...

Gertrude Mary Cox Gertrude Mary Cox (January 13, 1900 – October 17, 1978) was an American statistician and founder of the department of Experimental Statistics at North Carolina State University. She was later appointed director of both the Institute of Statistic ...

Scholarship in 2008. Her doctoral thesis, ''A penalized matrix decomposition, and its applications'' was supervised by Robert Tibshirani. She worked with Trevor Hastie on

canonical correlation In statistics, canonical-correlation analysis (CCA), also called canonical variates analysis, is a way of inferring information from cross-covariance matrices. If we have two vectors ''X'' = (''X''1, ..., ''X'n'') and ''Y'' ...

analysis. She co-authored ''An Introduction to Statistical Learning'' in 2013.

Research and career

Witten applies statistical machine learning to personalised medical treatments and decoding the genome. She uses machine learning to analyse data sets in

neuroscience Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions, and its disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, ...

and

genomics Genomics is an interdisciplinary field of molecular biology focusing on the structure, function, evolution, mapping, and editing of genomes. A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA, including all of its genes as well as its hierarchical, ...

. She is worried about increasing amounts of data in biomedical sciences. She was appointed to the

Genentech Genentech, Inc. is an American biotechnology corporation headquartered in South San Francisco, California. It operates as an independent subsidiary of holding company Roche. Genentech Research and Early Development operates as an independent cent ...

Endowed Professor in 2010. Witten contributed to the 2012 report ''Evolution of Translational Omics'', which provided best practise in translating

omics Omics is the collective characterization and quantification of entire sets of biological molecules and the investigation of how they translate into the structure, function, and dynamics of an organism or group of organisms. The branches of scien ...

research into a clinic. She is an associate editor for the ''

Journal of the American Statistical Association The ''Journal of the American Statistical Association'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Taylor & Francis on behalf of the American Statistical Association. It covers work primarily focused on the application of statis ...

''.

Recognition

She was elected as a

Fellow of the American Statistical Association Like many other academic professional societies, the American Statistical Association (ASA) uses the title of Fellow of the American Statistical Association as its highest honorary grade of membership. The designation of ASA Fellow has been a sign ...

in 2020. She was named to the 2022 class of Fellows of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, for "substantial contributions to the field of statistical machine learning, with applications to biology; and for communicating the fundamental ideas in the field to a broad audience". She was awarded an NIH Director's Early Independence Award in 2011. She was awarded the

David P. Byar Young Investigator Award for her work ''Penalized Classification Using Fisher’s Linear Discriminant'' in 2011. Her book ''An Introduction to Statistical Learning'' won a ''

Technometrics ''Technometrics'' is a journal of statistics for the physical, chemical, and engineering sciences, published quarterly since 1959 by the American Society for Quality The American Society for Quality (ASQ), formerly the American Society fo ...

'' Ziegel Award in 2014. She won an Elle magazine ''Genius Award'' in 2012. In 2013 she won an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship. She was named in the

Forbes 30 Under 30 ''Forbes'' 30 Under 30 is a set of lists published annually by ''Forbes'' magazine since 2011 consisting of 30 notable people under 30 years old in various industries. The American list consists of 600 people, with 30 selected in each of 20 sect ...

Science & Healthcare category in 2012, 2013 and 2014. In 2015 Witten was awarded the

Texas A&M University Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, TA&M, or TAMU) is a public university, public, Land-grant university, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas, United States. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of ...

Raymond J. Carroll Young Investigator Award. In 2018, she was named a

Simons Foundation The Simons Foundation is an American private foundation established in 1994 by Marilyn and James Harris Simons, Jim Simons with offices in New York City. As one of the largest charitable organizations in the United States with assets of over $5 ...

Investigator, and in 2022, she received the COPSS Presidents' Award.

Personal life

Daniela is the younger sister of Ilana B. Witten, the older sister of Rafael Witten, and the daughter of the physicists Chiara Nappi and

Edward Witten Edward Witten (born August 26, 1951) is an American theoretical physics, theoretical physicist known for his contributions to string theory, topological quantum field theory, and various areas of mathematics. He is a professor emeritus in the sc ...

. She is married to software engineer Ari Steinberg.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Witten, Daniela American women statisticians Stanford University alumni University of Washington faculty American biostatisticians American science writers Fellows of the American Statistical Association Fellows of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people)