Ani Adhikari

Ani Adhikari is a Teaching Professor in the Department of Statistics within the Mathematical and Physical Sciences division at the University of California, Berkeley, where she holds the positions of Chair of the Undergraduate Program Committee and Faculty Director of Pedagogy in the College of Computing, Data Science, and Society. She completed her undergraduate studies at the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata, taking courses in mathematics, statistics, and probability, and earned her PhD in Statistics from UC Berkeley in 1986. Adhikari's research interests center on applications of statistics in the natural sciences. She has made significant contributions to data science education, serving as one of the principal architects of the Data 8: Foundations of Data Science course, originally developed as CS 94, and co-authoring its accompanying textbook, Computational and Inferential Thinking: The Foundations of Data Science (second edition, with John DeNero and David Wagner). Additionally, she co-authored Statistics (second edition, 1991, with David Freedman, Robert Pisani, and Roger Purves). Her teaching excellence is recognized through the UC Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award, the Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching, being voted "best professor" in The Daily Californian's 2019 Best of Berkeley edition, and the 2024 Leon A. Henkin Citation for Distinguished Service from the Committee on Diversity, Equity and Campus Climate.

Adhikari leads the Data Scholars program, which provides academic support, community building, and opportunities beyond the classroom for students from underrepresented groups, mentoring them into teaching and leadership roles in data science courses. Influenced by Leon A. Henkin in the late 1980s, she emphasizes collaborative, high-aiming pedagogy that empowers students, promotes ethical data practices, and highlights biases and diverse perspectives in data analysis. She has co-taught introductory statistics MOOCs enrolling tens of thousands of students and advocates for data science as an interdisciplinary extension of statistical practice, integrating computer science and domain applications. Her efforts have shaped Berkeley's data science major and division, fostering broader access and impact in the field.