Alyssa Columbus
DEEN

Talks & Speaking

I’ve presented my work at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, at useR! 2026 in Warsaw, and in invited seminars for the Johns Hopkins Department of Biostatistics and the Yale-Mayo Clinic Center of Excellence in Regulatory Science and Innovation, among more than 30 academic talks so far. I also speak often to public and practitioner audiences about trustworthy data science.

A packed lecture hall watching Alyssa speak at the front, with three large projection screens behind her
Data Con LA 2018
Alyssa smiling inside the useR! 2026 photo frame covered in R package hex stickers
useR! 2026, Warsaw
Alyssa with arms outstretched on the Allée des Drapeaux in front of the Palais des Nations
Palais des Nations, Geneva

Recorded Talks

Recorded talkRecorded talkRecorded talkRecorded talkRecorded talk

Also on video: Data Visualization with R Shiny, my tutorial at O’Reilly OSCON 2018.

Recent Academic Talks

2026
From Traditional to Agentic AI: Securing Autonomously Acting Language Models Against Emergent Threats
Poster, Global Conference on AI, Security, and Ethics, Palais des Nations, Geneva
2026
Engineering AI for Social Impact
Invited guest lecture, Technical University of Munich School of Management
2026
Managing Analytic Multiplicity in Epidemiology: Reproducible Multiverse and Vibration of Effects Analyses in R
useR! 2026, the R User Conference, Warsaw
2026
Teaching Analytic Judgment and AI-Aware Assessment in Data-Driven Courses
European University Alliance for Global Health Conference on Pedagogical Development, University of Alcalá
2025
Analyzing the Analysts: Trustworthy Data Science for Education, Health, and Policy
Vivien Thomas Scholars Initiative Inaugural Research Retreat, Johns Hopkins
2025
Social, Legal, and Ethical Aspects of AI in Medicine and Public Health
Guest lecture, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
2024
Securing Knowledge: Lessons from Information Security and Privacy Education for Statistics Education
Joint Statistical Meetings, Portland
2020
R for Data Privacy and Governance
useR! 2020, the R User Conference

Selected Invited Engagements

2025
Securing AI from the Inside Out: Prompt Injection, Data Poisoning, and Other Nightmares
Invited panel, BigID DotCon Summit
2025
How to Use R with Excel
Invited workshop, Workshops for Ukraine
2024
Advance Open Science Through Robust Data Privacy Measures
Center for Open Science & NASA Year of Open Science Culminating Conference
2022
Defining Your Future in AI
Keynote, Women in AI Career LaunchPad
2020
How Open Access Information and Software Launches Innovation
Data Science Salon
2018
Data Visualization with R Shiny
O’Reilly OSCON

Speaker Profiles & Directories

I’m available for keynotes, seminars, panels, and workshops. For talk topics and booking, see my SpeakerHub profile or get in touch. You can also find me in the expert directories of the Scholars Strategy Network, the Federation of American Scientists, and 500 Women Scientists; as a mentor on Project SHORT; on the speaker pages of the Open Data Science Conference; and on Crunchbase.