Chris H. Wiggins

Wiggins is an applied mathematician with a PhD in theoretical physics working on computational biology. His research interests includes applied mathematics, mathematical biology, biopolymer dynamics, soft condensed matter, genetic networks and network inference, and machine learning.

Wiggins received a B.A. in Physics with a minor in Math from Columbia College in 1993 and a PhD in Theoretical Physics from Princeton University in 1998. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics at Columbia and is affiliated with Columbia's Data Science Institute, Department of Systems Biology, and Department of Statistics.

As of January 2014, he is also the Chief Data Scientist at the New York Times. He co-founded hackNY.org, an experiential learning program pairing computational and quantitative students with NYC startups via a 10-week structured internship program and twice-annual student `hackathons' (24-hour coding events).