UCLA Mathematics Dept. Alumni Career Panel

I was invited to join a panel of UCLA mathematics alumni for a Zoom meeting, “Inside Careers in Mathematics,” on April 28, 2022. The purpose of the annual panel and discussion is to connect undergraduate students to UCLA Math alumni who have ventured to unique careers using their Mathematics degree. As a data scientist, needless to say, I had a lot to say on this front! I fielded a number of questions like “what do you find most challenging and most rewarding about your work,” and “what changes do you foresee in your industry within the next 5 years?” The event also included separate break-out rooms for each panelist. Here I got to know a number of attendees more personally and answered specific questions. I was told my break-out room was the most popular. Viva la Data Science!

Packt Publishing Technical Reviewer

Recently, I was pleased to be contacted by one of my favorite technical book publishers, Packt Publishing, to come aboard as a technical reviewer – assessing and advising on book content including code. My first reviewing project will be an upcoming release of an R machine learning title. This is right up my alley since I teach data science at UCLA Extension and I always have my eyes open for new learning resources for my students. Over the years, I’ve reviewed many good books from Packt on insideBIGDATA, which is one reason why I’m excited about this new gig.

Onalytica Interview

Please check out my recent interview with influencer marketing firm Onalytica!

Who’s Who in Data Science and ML

I was honored to be selected and included in Onalytica‘s new industry report “Who’s Who in Data Science and Machine Learning” as a Key Opinion Leader. Download the entire report HERE.

Editor-in-Chief – insideBIGDATA.com

I’m pleased to report that I’ve recently been appointed to Editor-in-Chief for leading industry publication insideBIGDATA.com. The news and analysis outlet specializes in big data, data science, machine learning, AI and deep learning technologies. My responsibilities have expanded over my previous role as Managing Editor to include: industry news analysis, feature article writing, and oversight of our various channels and regular columns.

Amazon discover.bot

I recently got a new gig as Industry Analyst for Amazon’s new discover.bot business unit. I will be advising on AI chatbot technology and writing periodic articles assessing how bots are quickly evolving across a broad variety of industries. My first piece is now available as of October 30, 2019, “Should a Chatbot Reveal Itself?” I’m looking forward to following this dynamic and growing industry segment.

UCLA Extension – Intro to Data Science

I’m really excited to be teaching again! Starting April 2 and 4, 2019, I’m teaching two sections of the popular “Introduction to Data Science” course for UCLA Extension. In a previous life I taught at UNEX for 15 years, but after getting too busy as a data scientist, I had to walk away from teaching for a while. I’m happy to be returning to education now. I feel the time is right to get future data scientists up to speed to fill in the widening skills gap due to the accelerating rise in demand for data science professionals. Glad to be giving back!

[UPDATE: I am now teaching regularly for UCLA Extension, 2 classes per quarter. Due to COVID-19, all classes are virtual, but enrollment is great! My course GitHub repo is found HERE.]

Open Data Science

I would like to announce that I’m now working with a new up-and-comer in the industry – Open Data Science, most commonly known for their Open Data Science Conferences (ODSC) West, India, Europe, and East. More recently, the company is providing a wealth of technical resources such as articles dealing with data science tools, modeling (machine learning), AI, deep learning, data viz, data transformation, academic research, and so much more. I will be making regular contributions as a data scientist. My first contribution is “Tips for Linear Regression Diagnostics.”

[UPDATE 11/23/2020] : since my original announcement, I’ve made 80+ contributions for the ODSC blog. I just received excellent feedback from the company that my pieces were the most popular! You can read all my article HERE.

Data Science with R Master Class

I’d like to announce my new educational resource – a complete video series of instructional screencasts designed to get you up to speed with data science and machine learning using the R statistical environment. The materials are offered over on O’Reilly Safari Books Online as “Data Science with R Master Class.”

This video series will show you how to apply R to your data science projects. You will learn to perform the data science process including data acquisition, data transformation, exploratory data analysis, data visualization, and statistical learning algorithm usage. This course will provide you with the tools and techniques required to excel with statistical learning methods in tackling important data problem domains. The R statistical environment was chosen for use in this course because many data scientists use it exclusively for their project work. All of the code examples for the course are written in R. In addition, many popular R packages and data sets will be used. The R code for all modules of the class can be found in this GitHub repo.

I’ve patterned the materials to be consumed in parallel with my book “Data Science and Machine Learning: An Introduction to Statistical Learning Methods with R.”

GPU Technology Conference 2017

I was very pleased to attend the GPU Technology Conference 2017 as the guest of host company NVIDIA on May 8-11 in Silicon Valley. This was my second GTC as I became acquainted with the GPU (graphics processing unit) universe last year while attending the conference. You can read my 2016 field report HERE. I was so impressed with NVIDIA last year, I assumed it was just an outlier and that this year the company would come back down to earth. I was wrong. I was equally impressed with what I saw at this year’s installment terms of how GPUs and NVIDIA are transforming the field of AI and deep learning. This Field Report chronicles what I saw and I’m delighted to share my experience!