Chris Wiggins

Chris Wiggins is an Associate Professor of Applied Mathematics at Columbia University and serves as the Chief Data Scientist at The New York Times. He has been a faculty member at Columbia since 2001 and is affiliated with multiple departments, including the Data Science Institute and Systems Biology.23

Education and Career

Wiggins earned his B.A. in Physics with a minor in Mathematics from Columbia College in 1993 and completed his PhD in Theoretical Physics at Princeton University in 1998. Before joining Columbia, he was a Courant Instructor at New York University from 1998 to 2001.24

Research Interests

His research focuses on applied mathematics, computational biology, machine learning, and the analysis of biological networks. He has developed algorithms for gene regulatory networks and has worked on various projects involving statistical inference in biological contexts.24

Contributions and Initiatives

In 2010, Wiggins co-founded hackNY, a nonprofit organization that connects students with startups in New York City through hackathons and internships. He has also contributed to the academic community by co-developing courses like "Data: Past, Present, Future" at Columbia.13

Honors and Awards

Wiggins has received several accolades, including the Avanessians Diversity Award from Columbia University in 2007 and being named a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2014 for his contributions to physics and education.35