Jeremy Ashkenas

Jeremy Ashkenas is an American software developer, designer, and data visualization specialist known for creating influential open-source libraries and interactive visual journalism. He has contributed to web technologies, statistical graphics, and newsroom tooling, collaborating with publishers, researchers, and technologists across the technology and media ecosystems. His work spans library development, visualization frameworks, and tooling that bridge programming, design, and reporting.

Early life and education

Ashkenas studied computer science and design-related topics during his formative years, engaging with programming communities and open-source projects. He developed skills in web standards and scripting languages while participating in events and organizations that included intersections with figures from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, Harvard University, University of California, Berkeley, and technology meetups associated with Mozilla Foundation and The Apache Software Foundation. His early influences included practitioners from Yahoo!, Google, Facebook, Microsoft Research, and Apple Inc., and he learned from publications and conferences such as Strata Data Conference, Web 2.0 Summit, SXSW, and OpenVisConf.

Career

Ashkenas's professional path includes roles at prominent media and technology organizations. He worked on interactive projects for The New York Times, collaborating with teams that interfaced with reporters, editors, and designers familiar with outlets like The Washington Post, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, and ProPublica. He later joined companies and platforms emphasizing interactive notebooks and visualization, working alongside contributors from Observable, Netflix, Stripe, GitHub, and Zillow Group. His open-source contributions have been adopted by developers at Mozilla Corporation, Google Chrome Developers, Microsoft Edge, Apple WebKit, and independent creators across communities like Stack Overflow and GitLab.

Major projects and contributions

Ashkenas is best known for authoring and maintaining several widely used JavaScript libraries and tools. He created the framework that influenced client-side architecture used by teams at Twitter, LinkedIn, Airbnb, Uber, and Dropbox. He authored libraries that have been referenced by engineers at npm, Inc., Y Combinator startups, and projects incubated at Apache Software Foundation-hosted initiatives. His work on visualization tools affected analysis workflows at institutions such as National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and scholarly groups at Princeton University and Columbia University. Colleagues in the open-source community include contributors involved with D3.js, React (JavaScript library), AngularJS, Backbone.js, and Underscore.js-adjacent projects. His projects integrated with publishing platforms and charting ecosystems used by Quartz, Vox Media, Bloomberg, Reuters, and The Financial Times.

He developed interactive graphics and authoring tools that informed reporting on topics covered by United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and policy groups in think tanks such as Brookings Institution and Pew Research Center. His code and patterns have been taught in courses at institutions like New York University, Columbia Journalism School, Carnegie Mellon University, and workshops led by practitioners connected to Knight Foundation and OpenNews.

Awards and recognition

Ashkenas's work has been highlighted by organizations and conferences recognizing technical and journalistic innovation. His projects have been showcased at Nieman Lab, featured in discussions at Data Visualization Society, honored in showcases connected to Pulitzer Prize-winning newsrooms, and cited by award programs associated with Online Journalism Awards and SxSW Interactive Awards. Peers from Wired, MIT Technology Review, The Atlantic, and New Yorker-adjacent commentators have noted his influence on interactive storytelling and developer tooling. He has been acknowledged in community roundups produced by GitHub, recognized in annual lists curated by Fast Company, and cited in academic and industry panels hosted by ACM SIGGRAPH and IEEE VIS.

Personal life and interests

Outside of software development and visualization, Ashkenas engages with creative and technical communities that intersect with designers, journalists, and researchers from AIGA, Interaction Design Foundation, and IxDA. His interests encompass cartography practices used by institutions like National Geographic, computational graphics topics explored at SIGGRAPH, and open-data movements allied with Open Knowledge Foundation and Data.gov. He participates in collaborative projects, code sprints, and mentoring efforts connected to Hack for Change and civic-technology networks such as Code for America.

Category:American software engineers Category:Open-source advocates