Ritika consults on data science projects with researchers across Northwestern, facilitates a team of students who provide data science and visualization services, and teaches workshops on Python and R programming and tools and applications for data science and machine learning.
Ritika has worked on data science projects across several domains. Her achievements include building automated pipelines for image analysis that quantify gene expression data from hundreds of cells without manual intervention. She is passionate about the use of reproducible and interpretable analysis methods. In keeping with this, she has developed methods to assess response-bias in survey data to build statistical models of human decision-making processes, used natural language processing tools to sort through research literature to quantify the reproducibility and replicability of literature reported RNA-Seq analysis pipelines, and developed an interpretable machine learning model to automate unsupervised clustering and cell-type identification from flow-cytometry data. She also has extensive experience developing simulation models that help researchers better understand their data-generation processes and ask more nuanced research questions.
Ritika is a scientist with Skype-a-Scientist, an organization that connects scientists with classrooms worldwide to make science accessible and fun through personal connections with scientists. She is also a registered mentor under the Northwestern University-Niles West STEM mentorship program for high school students pursuing advanced research projects. Ritika’s research background is in computational and experimental biology. Before joining our team, she was a postdoctoral scholar focusing on reproducible data analysis using machine learning. Ritika has an MS in biotechnology and bioinformatics and a PhD in interdisciplinary biological sciences.