NYU Data Science newsletter – August 21, 2015

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Having just attended the European Survey Research Association (ESRA) conference, my brain is now full of important learnings and ideas for future research. While many of those ideas fall into the category of “How to conduct better surveys,” a lot of others relate to how similar and different academic and private research conferences are. Let me give you a few examples of what academics can learn from market researchers.

Instead of maintaining our own website going forward, we’re now going to empower institutions who specialize in infectious disease research to use the data to build their own models. Starting this season, we’ll provide Flu and Dengue signal data directly to partners including Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health (to update their dashboard), Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Influenza Division. We will also continue to make historical Flu and Dengue estimate data available for anyone to see and analyze.

When the University of Wisconsin asked businesses what they were looking for in employees, nearly all of them said, ‘data scientists.’ The university responded with an online data science master degree program to help bring more qualified data professionals to the job market.

Many companies are ramping up their efforts at becoming more data-driven. As a result, a recruitment war in the data science field is now upon us. Companies will have to spend more per data scientist in order to attract the top talent. And those that can’t offer the most competitive salaries will need to find other enticements to offer. Here are four strategies for filling the data science knowledge gap in your organization.

Owen Zhang is the Superman of data scientists. Intel anointed him with that title because he is ranked No. 1 on a website named Kaggle, a clearinghouse for data science problems.

On Kaggle, big companies post their data for independent data scientists to mine. The scientist who comes up with the best model from the data wins a prize. After 27 competitions, Zhang is ranked No. 1, said Diane Bryant, senior vice president of the data center group at Intel, speaking at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.

The New York Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with leading clinical trials software firm Medidata Solutions, will assemble professionals from the fields of science and engineering, analytics, healthcare, business, and government to explore the promise wearable biosensors, along with integrated mobile apps, hold in improving the quality of patient care and clinical outcomes. This one-and-a-half-day conference will focus on groundbreaking device innovation, data optimization and validation, commercial platform integration, as well as clinical implementation and regulation.

Deadline for abstract submission: Tuesday, September 1

The next NYU Data Science Showcase will feature Moore-Sloan Postdoctoral Fellow Daniela Huppenkothen talking about astronomy and Research Engineer Stefan Karpinski talking about the Julia programming language.

Monday, October 26, 2015 from 5-8 p.m. in Kimmel 905/907.