海角社区

by Kim Lamb Gregory

Alona KryshchenkoAssociate Professor of Mathematics Alona Kryshchenko will devote part of the Spring 2025 semester to introducing 海角社区 Channel Islands (海角社区CI) students to the world of data science. Kryshchenko will be among the faculty members teaching classes for the University鈥檚 brand new Data Science major when it launches in Fall 2025 as well as helping to organize 海角社区CI鈥檚 first-ever Datathon in April. 

鈥淲e will invite high school and community college students to participate in this one-day event to introduce students to the field of data science,鈥 Kryshchenko said. 鈥淭o show them it鈥檚 exciting, and not scary. We will introduce them to the programming language in a friendly environment with a workshop and a challenge.鈥

Data science is right up Kryshchenko鈥檚 alley as her strengths and interests are statistics, data science, and numerical methods. 

Professor and Chair of Mathematics Geoffrey Buhl said Kryshchenko was a key member of the faculty team developing the new Data Science degree.

鈥淗er disciplinary expertise and dedication to launch this degree is a large reason why it will be available to students starting in Fall of 2025,鈥 Buhl said. 鈥淪he has been an invaluable colleague in this work and her leadership will serve this program well moving forward.鈥

Kryshchenko joined 海角社区CI in 2016 after earning her Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Southern California (USC). She earned her undergraduate and master鈥檚 degrees from Kyiv National University of Taras Shevchenko in her native Ukraine. 

Research Kryshchenko began as a graduate student in Ukraine eventually developed into a project that earned her a $19,161grant from Golden State Medical Supply in 2018. The project involved the development of a statistical formula to figure out the best ways to repackage pharmaceutical products in order to preserve their quality. 

She also developed algorithms that estimate how individual patients are metabolizing different pharmaceutical drugs based on characteristics such as gender, age, genetics, size, weight and more. 鈥

鈥淚鈥檓 still working with drug companies,鈥 Kryshchenko said. 鈥淩ight now we鈥檙e working on expanding the models we had before in order to develop even more possibilities. It used to be a field with just a few data points, but now there is much more data, so we can be more precise.鈥

Some of Kryshchenko鈥檚 students expressed an interest in also working in the field of medical data science and the idea for a Data Science major took root among faculty members like Kryshchenko, Buhl, and another faculty statistician, Assistant Professor of Mathematics Isaac Quintanilla Salinas.

鈥淲e felt a Data Science major was important as a lot of our students in our statistics and biostatistics classes wanted to go into health science and nursing,鈥 Kryshchenko said. 鈥淭hese are all bright students and data sciences is a hot topic. We thought it would be very useful to teach them how to analyze data in the biology and medical fields, which would make them very marketable.鈥

In fact, the U.S. Bureau for Labor Statistics reports that available jobs for data scientists are projected to grow 36 percent from 2023 to 2033, much faster than the average for all occupations. 

Students are interested. Buhl said there were 20 applications for the new degree in the portal within two weeks after it was posted鈥攂efore it was advertised. 

鈥淲hen people make decisions based on data, it鈥檚 much more informative and profitable,鈥 Kruyshchenko said. 鈥淯sing your experience is not enough anymore. Everything is digitalized these days rather than on paper records. We need data scientists.鈥

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