Launch of Data Science Research Centre

Date: Wednesday, April 20th, 2016

Time: 12pm - 2pm

Place: EV 3.309

(By invitation only)

Talk at 12:30pm:
Title: What is a Chief Data Officer?
Speaker: Robert H. Warren, CDO, Kira Systems

ABSTRACT

Big Data, Analytics, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence - these have become popular terms used in everyday conversations to defend and bolster predictions of both impeding doom and a new golden age for humanity. Decrease in costs and an increase in availability of data, software and computing power are creating new opportunities for organizations to break down informational silos and reduce uncertainty in business planning.

However, an ongoing obstacle to the propagation of data science is that data-driven service delivery is disruptive to trusted and established processes, including talent recruitment and training. The idea of the “data scientist,” a person trained to operationalize large amounts of data, is not necessarily a new one but one that is claimed by multiple disciplines.

In this talk, I will review the origins of data science and the organizational needs that it fills. We will look at the historical beginnings of data science, its progression into a field of its own and discuss a few observations about the nature of the data scientist within a modern firm.

BIO

Dr. Rob Warren is the Chief Data Scientist for Kira Systems, a contract analysis machine learning firm. After obtaining his bachelors of engineering from Concordia University and his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo, he held research posts in industry, government and academia both in North America and in Europe. Prior to joining Kira Systems, Rob was a senior research associate with the Big Data Institute at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada.