Anika Alam is the Assistant Director at the Center for Educational Data Science and Innovation (EDSI), at the University of Maryland, College Park. She holds a Ph.D. in Education Policy from the University of Pennsylvania in 2025, where she was an AERA-NSF Dissertation Fellow and an IES Predoctoral Fellow. Her research applies machine learning, causal inference, and economic evaluation methods to better understand policies and programs that improve education outcomes, especially for children from households struggling with poverty.