Jennifer "Jenny" Bryan is a

data scientist Data science is an interdisciplinary academic field that uses statistics, scientific computing, scientific methods, processing, scientific visualization, algorithms and systems to extract or extrapolate knowledge from potentially noisy, struct ...

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''. In the ''North American system'', used in the United States and many other countries, it is a position ...

of statistics at the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a Public university, public research university with campuses near University of British Columbia Vancouver, Vancouver and University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, in British Columbia, Canada ...

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

software engineer Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining software applications. It involves applying engineering principles and computer programming expertise to develop ...

RStudio RStudio IDE (or RStudio) is an integrated development environment for R, a programming language for statistical computing and graphics. It's available in two formats: RStudio Desktop is a regular desktop application while RStudio Server runs ...

from

Vancouver, Canada Vancouver is a major city in Western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the city, up from 631,486 in 2016. The Me ...

and is known for creating open source tools which connect R to

Google Sheets Google Sheets is a spreadsheet application and part of the free, web-based Google Docs Editors suite offered by Google. Google Sheets is available as a web application; a mobile app for: Android, iOS, and as a desktop application on Googl ...

and

Google Drive Google Drive is a file-hosting service and synchronization service developed by Google. Launched on April 24, 2012, Google Drive allows users to store files in the cloud (on Google servers), synchronize files across devices, and share files ...

Education

Bryan earned her

Bachelor of Arts A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...

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

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 ...

from

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

in 1992 and her

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

Biostatistics Biostatistics (also known as biometry) is a branch of statistics that applies 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 experimen ...

from

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

in 2001.

Career

As an

statistics Statistics (from German language, German: ', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a s ...

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 species of freshwater ray-finned fish belonging to the family Danionidae of the order Cypriniformes. Native to South Asia, it is a popular aquarium fish, frequently sold under the trade name zebra danio (an ...

, 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 Hybrid word, blend of the Greek ''caeno-'' (recent), ''r ...

'' 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 genetic disorder inherited in an autosomal recessive manner that impairs the normal clearance of Sputum, mucus from the lungs, which facilitates the colonization and infection of the lungs by bacteria, notably ''Staphy ...

. Beyond biostatistics, Bryan has also contributed to

medoid Medoids are representative objects of a data set or a cluster within a data set whose sum of dissimilarities to all the objects in the cluster is minimal. Medoids are similar in concept to means or centroids, but medoids are always restricted to be ...

s-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 Git () is a distributed version control system that tracks versions of files. It is often used to control source code by programmers who are developing software collaboratively. Design goals of Git include speed, data integrity, and suppor ...

version control Version control (also known as revision control, source control, and source code management) is the software engineering practice of controlling, organizing, and tracking different versions in history of computer files; primarily source code t ...

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 () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

, 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 Hadley Alexander Wickham (born 14 October 1979) is a New Zealand statistician known for his work on open-source software for the R (programming language), R statistical programming environment. He is the Chief scientific officer, chief scientist ...

. 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 (, ; ; stylised as LEGO) is a line of plastic construction toys manufactured by the Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. Lego consists of variously coloured interlocking plastic bricks made of acrylonitri ...

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 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

. 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 journal ...

. 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 (management consultancies), Big Three" (or MBB, the world's three large ...

Boston, MA Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

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