Topic: Data Science

Rayid Ghani

Did you vote in 2012? If so, Rayid Ghani may have lent a hand. He was the chief scientist at Obama for America in 2012 and played a groundbreaking role in the campaign. Focusing on analytics, technology, and data, he used online tools like email and social networking to motivate people’s offline actions, from fundraising and volunteering to voting.

Ghani is one of a small number of tech wizards in an increasingly data-driven world. If the 2008 campaign was about charisma and hope, the 2012 campaign was about science and data. Gone is the art of the political campaign. Successful campaigns are no longer run by people who play by gut instinct but instead by people like Ghani. With work that focuses on developing and using machine learning and data mining algorithms to solve challenges in business, government, and politics, he helps organizations make the most out of their institutional knowledge. In today’s data-centric, competitive world, businesses need to utilize increasingly targeted approaches to attract consumers. One of the leading experts in this field, Rayid Ghani addresses how data, analytics, and communications advances can be used to influence and change consumer behavior. He tells stories from his time in the Obama camp and shares successes about using the latest tools and applying big data to organizations.

At Obama for America, Ghani aimed to convert the vast amount of data collected through large commercial databases, boutique lists, voter files, social media sites, and an unprecedented quantity of voter interviews into a source of valuable data. With the use of sophisticated analytics, algorithms, and machine learning, the insights from the data were used to galvanize the campaign and predict voters’ views on particular issues like abortion and the economy. Armed with this information, the campaign was more focused in its message, and the result was vastly increased efficiency in fund-raising and volunteer and voter mobilization.

Before Obama for America, Ghani worked at Accenture Technology Labs for 10 years as a research scientist and the director of analytics research. His work closed the gap between academia and business and spanned a variety of industries, including healthcare, retail and consumer packaged goods (CPG), manufacturing, intelligence, and financial services. Ghani mined mountains of private corporate data to find statistical patterns that could forecast consumer behavior. He then helped organizations find and use patterns in consumer behavior to develop targeted strategies for individual preferences. For example, he deployed algorithms that replaced health insurers’ random audits, to anticipate which of 50,000 daily claims were most likely to require individual attention.

Ghani’s work has been published in more than 50 academic publications with more than 2,000 citations. He has received myriad media mentions on TV and in publications like TIME, The New York Times, Slate, Businessweek, Financial Times, Chicago Tribune, and U.S. News & World Report. He has also been featured in books, such as The Numerati and SuperCrunchers. Ghani’s interests span a whole gamut from general machine learning and data mining to privacy preserving data mining, text mining, semi-supervised learning, active learning, information retrieval, NLP, and knowledge management. He has filed for 15 patents and seven have been awarded so far.

Moriba Jah

Dr. Moriba Jah is the Director of the Computational Astronautical Sciences and Technologies (CAST) group within the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin, where he is also an Associate Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics in the Cockrell School of Engineering. He holds the Mrs. Pearlie Dashiell Henderson Centennial Fellowship in Engineering and trains a new generation of astrodynamicists and space traffic leaders through research and education at the intersection of engineering, policy, and commercialization. He has authored more than 100 scientific articles, columns, and book chapters, including a handful of op-eds. A highly sought public speaker, he has given more than 50 lectures, speeches, and invited talks in the last few years, such as testimony for hearings of U.S. Senate committees, keynotes for business meetings, plenary lectures for scientific conferences, lecture series for NATO’s Science and Technology Organization, TED and TEDx talks, and the Air Force Research Laboratory’s INSPIRE series. Dr. Jah has served as a member of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UN-COPUOS) and is the chair of the NATO SCI-279-TG activity on defining a Common NATO Space Domain Awareness Operating Picture.

As a professor, Dr. Jah has taught undergraduate and graduate courses at UT Austin related to space and astronautical sciences. Dr. Jah's research focuses on the convergence of policy, technology, and security related to space traffic management and space situational awareness. Government agencies such as the Department of Defense, Air Force Research Laboratory, and others as well as non-governmental organizations and private industry have featured Dr. Jah's research in their own decision-making processes.

His expertise, opinions, and research have been published, cited or featured in many media outlets, including the SpaceWatch Global, pace News, Wired, ROOM, NatGeo, NPR, BBC, ABC, and others.

Prior to being at UT Austin, Dr. Jah was the Director of the University of Arizona’s Space Object Behavioral Sciences with applications to Space Domain Awareness, Space Protection, Space Traffic Monitoring, and Space Debris research. Preceding that, Dr. Jah was the lead for the Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) Advanced Sciences and Technology Research Institute for Astronautics (ASTRIA) and Technical Advisor to the Guidance, Navigation, and Control Program at AFRL’s Space Vehicles Directorate. He received his B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Prescott, Arizona, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering Sciences from the University of Colorado at Boulder specializing in astrodynamics and statistical orbit determination. Before joining AFRL in 2007, he was a spacecraft navigator for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, CA, serving on Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey, Mars Express (joint mission with ESA), Mars Exploration Rovers, Hayabusa (joint mission with JAXA), and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Dr. Jah founded the American Astronautical Society’s (AAS) Space Surveillance Technical Committee and Chaired the AIAA Astrodynamics Technical Committee. He is a member of the Astrodynamics Committee of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) and a permanent member of the Space Debris Committee of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA). Dr. Jah is an elected member of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA), a TED Fellow, a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety (IAASS), the AFRL, the AAS and the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), as well as an IEEE Senior Member, Associate Editor of Elsevier’s Advances in Space Research, Acta Astronautica, and Space Safety Engineering Journals.

Dr. Jah has recently joined the Privateer team as Chief Scientific Advisor. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak recently co-founded the space venture with the mission to drive space sustainability. The startup is addressing space sustainability and creating solutions to make orbits around Earth safe and reliable.