Jenny Bryan

Jennifer "Jenny" Bryan
Occupation(s)	Data scientist, statistician, software engineer, associate professor
Years active	Since 1996
Known for	Development of open source tools integrating R with Google Sheets and Google Drive; establishing Master in Data Science Program at University of British Columbia

Jennifer "Jenny" Bryan is a data scientist and an associate professor specializing in statistics at the University of British Columbia. She played a key role in establishing the Master in Data Science Program there. Bryan is also a statistician and software engineer at RStudio, located in Vancouver, Canada, where she is recognized for developing open source tools that enable integration between R and platforms such as Google Sheets and Google Drive.

Education

Bryan completed her Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and German literature at Yale University in 1992. She later obtained her PhD in Biostatistics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2001.

Career

During her tenure as an associate professor of statistics at the University of British Columbia, Bryan concentrated on biostatistics with a focus on gene expression and microarray data analysis. Her research encompassed measuring photomotor responses in larval zebrafish, designing genetic interaction assays involving synthetic lethality in Caenorhabditis elegans, and employing yeast models to discover modifier genes related to cystic fibrosis. Additionally, she contributed to the development of medoid-based clustering techniques and authored publications addressing best practices in scientific computing and version control for research data workflows.

At UBC, Bryan was instrumental in creating the Master of Data Science Program and developed instructional content for STAT 545, one of the pioneering courses in data science that emphasizes hands-on experience with data cleaning, exploratory analysis, visualization, and utilization of contemporary R packages alongside Git and GitHub. Since late 2016, she has been on leave from UBC to collaborate with Hadley Wickham’s team at RStudio.

Bryan has been proficient with both S and R programming languages since 1996 and is widely acknowledged for her open source contributions within the R community. Her notable innovations include introducing pedagogical approaches such as Lego-based programming analogies and the concept of data rectangling to enhance reproducibility and project organization. She is also credited for bridging R with spreadsheet applications like Excel and Google Sheets by developing the R packages googlesheets and googledrive, facilitating seamless integration with Google services.

Her involvement extends to instruction, R package development, and leadership within the rOpenSci community. Bryan holds membership on the R Foundation Forwards task force and serves on the editorial board of BMC Bioinformatics. Early in her professional journey, she worked as an Associate at Boston Consulting Group based in Boston, Massachusetts.

Personal life

Bryan resides with her husband, their three children, and their dog named Toby.

External links

• ".rprofile: Jenny Bryan" – Interview by ROpenSci
• "Happy Git and GitHub for the user" – Contributors Page for Happy Git and GitHub for the useR
• "Jennifer (Jenny) Bryan" – Profile on GitHub
• "Jenny Bryan: 'You need a huge tolerance for ambiguity'" – Interview on StatsChat