Alyssa Goodman, President

As the Robert Wheeler Willson Professor of Applied Astronomy at Harvard University, Alyssa teaches Astrophysics, Data Visualization, and the History of Prediction. She holds an undergraduate degree from MIT and PhD from Harvard, both in Physics.

Alyssa's interests in data visualization stemmed originally from her enthusiasm for art and design, and grew deeper as she realized how critical data exploration and visual communication are to science and data science. She began teaching visualization at Harvard in 2001, and she was named the Founding Director of the Initiative in Innovative Computing, Harvard's its first data science institute, in 2005. An ardent advocate of open data and open-source code, Goodman's writings include "10 Simple Rules for the Care and Feeding of Scientific Data" and "The Paper of the Future." Her advocacy for effective data science includes service on the National Academies Board on Research Data and Information and the NSF-sponsored Council on Big Data, Ethics, and Society, which produced "Ten Simple Rules for Responsible Big Data Research" in 2017.

Alyssa's research in astrophysics relies on combining diverse, high-dimensional, and often large data sets to reveal the nature of complex structures within our galaxy. New software approaches she helps to create , such as the WorldWide Telescope and glue, can facilitate dramatic discoveries, like 2020's revelation of "The Radcliffe Wave."

To help others explore data more deeply, Alyssa, along with Chris Beaumont, Tom Robitaille, and Michelle Borkin, founded the glue software project in 2012 and then glue solutions, inc. in 2019.

Goodman's Harvard website • portfolio • Blog (10QViz.org) • Twitter