Alyssa Columbus is a PhD Candidate in Biostatistics and Vivien Thomas Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Under the guidance of Dr. Brian Caffo and Dr. Stephanie Hicks, she conducts methodological and applied research in biomedical data science and informatics, information security and privacy in public health, and statistics and data science education.
Alyssa is a member of the NASA Datanaut corps and has over seven years of statistical industry and research experience, including as a data scientist, information security analyst, and consultant. While serving in these roles, she has authored technical guides, tutorials, and articles that have been published and featured by leading organizations, including Microsoft, O’Reilly Media, the American Statistical Association, the Association for Computing Machinery, and Statista. She has also delivered invited talks, guest lectures, and discussions on data science at conferences and universities worldwide and contributed to open source software projects that, in total, have over 49 million downloads.
In addition to her technical roles and leadership, Alyssa engages in outreach and community service. She founded and led the Irvine chapter of R-Ladies Global with over 630 members, and is a volunteer and lifetime member of the Girl Scouts of the United States of America. Throughout her career, Alyssa has mentored numerous quantitative professionals worldwide.
Alyssa brings together academic excellence, real-world experience, and a commitment to service in her work. If you would like to get in touch with her, please fill out the “Contact” form.