Jessica Kirkpatrick

Jessica Kirkpatrick has been working as a data scientist in the tech industry for the past seven years. Her previous companies include Slack, Microsoft, Hired, and Chegg. Before making her transition to the private sector, Jessica earned a Ph.D. in Astrophysics from UC Berkeley, where she discovered and studied some of the most distant and brightest known objects in the universe, quasars, and worked with large and complex data sets. Her work led to the discovery of 200,000 new quasars.

As a data scientist, instead of spending her days finding patterns in the structure of the universe, she has spent them finding patterns in the behaviors of people in order to make technology work better for us all. In addition to her work in private industry, Jessica maintains an active role in giving back to the astrophysics and data communities. She is on the Board of Trustees for the American Astronomical Society and the advisory board for Udacity’s data science program.