ACCELERATE AI KEYNOTE 3;
WHO CAN CLAIM TO BE A DATA SCIENTIST? DEFINING ROLES, STANDARDS AND ASSESSING SKILLS IN DATA SCIENCE
ODSC East • Boston, 2019
Data Science Conference & Expo
April 30th – May 3rd • Hynes Convention Center
Abstract: Are you confused about what it takes to be a data scientist? Curious about how companies recruit, train and manage analytics resources? You are not alone. Many employers, educators, and managers are struggling with these issues. In fact, tremendous resources are being wasted by employers on interviewing candidates who claim knowledge of Data Science that are not even qualified for such positions. This presentation covers insight from the most comprehensive research effort to-date on the data analytics profession, proposes a framework for standardization of roles in the industry and methods for assessing skills.
We have been running an industry initiative named: Initiative for Analytics and Data Science Standards (IADSS) to support the development of standards regarding analytics role definitions, required skills and career advancement paths. The initiative kicked off a research study including a detailed survey for analytics executives and professionals, in-depth interviews with industry leaders and academicians as well as an extensive literature review. We will present our initial findings from the research and provide case studies of how bad this confusion and why it is important for the field, for practitioners and for employers and educators to have clarity on this front.
Bio: Usama is Co-Founder & CTO at OODA Health, Inc a VC-funded company aiming to liberate the healthcare system from administrative waste by leveraging AI/automation to create real-time/retail-like experience in payments in healthcare. He is also Chairman & Founder at Open Insights – a technology and strategic consulting firm he founded in 2008 to help enterprises deploy data-driven solutions to grow revenue from Data assets through BigData strategy, new business models on data assets, and deploying data science, AI/ML, and bigData solutions in large enterprises.
From 2013-2016 Usama served as Global Chief Data Officer & Group Managing Director at Barclays Bank in London, after launching the largest tech startup accelerator in MENA following his appointment as Executive Chairman of Oasis500 in Jordan by King Abdullah II in 2010. His background includes Chairman and CEO roles at several startups, including Blue Kangaroo Corp, DMX Group and digiMine Inc.
He was the first person to hold the Chief Data Officer title when Yahoo! acquired his second startup in 2004. At Yahoo! he built the Strategic Data Solutions group and founded Yahoo! Research Labs where much of the early work on BigData made it to open source and led to Hadoop and other open source contributions. He has held leadership roles at Microsoft (1996-2000) and founded the machine learning systems group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (1989-2005), where his work on machine learning resulted in the top Excellence in Research award from Caltech, and a U.S. Government medal from NASA.
Usama has published over 100 technical articles on data mining, data science, AI/ML, and databases. He holds over 30 patents and is a Fellow of both the AAAI and the ACM. Usama earned his Ph.D. in Engineering in AI/Machine Learning from the University of Michigan. Ann Arbor. He has edited two influential books on data mining/data science and served as editor-in-chief on two key industry journals. He also served on the boards/advisory boards of private and public companies including: Criteo, Invensense, RapidMiner, Stella.AI, Virsec, Silniva, Abe.AI, NetSeer, Choicestream, Medio, and others. He is on advisory boards of the Data Science Institute at Imperial College, AAI at UTS, and The University of Michigan College of Engineering National advisory Board. He serves on the Board Advisory Committee to Nationwide Building Society in the UK and on the Advisory board of the WEF Global Center for Cybersecurity. He is an active angel investor and advisor in many early-stage tech startups across the U.S., Europe and the Middle East.
Usama Fayyad @ODSC 2019 - Licenced to Analyze? IADSS Research Updates - interview by Kate Strachnyi
