On Thursday, UC Berkeley Statistics Professor Ani Adhikari received The Daily Californian’s Best of Berkeley Award for Best Professor. This award honors Professor Adhikari’s widespread pedagogical achievements and dedication towards helping make data science accessible and engaging for all.
In 2006, Professor Adhikari received the UC Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award and since then has explored ways to build Berkeley's data science program from the ground up. Notable courses she has helped to develop include UC Berkeley’s Foundations of Data Science (Data 8) and Probability for Data Science (Prob 140). Her distinct and engaging teaching style has drawn thousands of students from interdisciplinary programs into the data science field, helping to make Data 8 one of the most popular courses on campus, while strengthening the foundations of the university’s new data science major.
In a recent interview, Professor Adhikari shared that she hopes to continue making data science “relevant and accessible for all” by combining high-level content with exciting resources and relevant applications. The “broadest set of people in the world,” she explains, “need to be the owners of the data.”