Yu-To Chen  is a Data Scientist at Google since 2006 and is currently working on Android in Mountain View, CA.  His responsibility includes Android churn prediction, mobile battery diagnostics, device lifespan estimation and modeling of customer lifetime values.  His areas of expertise are Big Data analytics and predictive modeling.  Prior to Google, he worked at PayPal, GE Global Research and a number of startups in between - covering risk management, web analytics, pricing and supply chain management.  Once he was a visiting assistant professor at University of Iowa (1993) and an adjunct professor at Union College, NY (2000.)  He has been awarded 28 US/KR patents and published over a dozen of journal/conference papers.  He earned his BS in Mechanical Engineering from National Central University in Taiwan (1985) and PhD in Industrial Engineering with a minor in Computer Science from Penn State University in 1993.

 

In this talk, we will provide a glimpse of the life as a Data Scientist at Google.  At a high level, a Data Scientist plays a role as an ensemble of product managers, software engineers, database admins, statisticians and financial analysts.  At the technical level, a Data Scientist literally lives, embraces and breathes Cloud-enabled knowledge discovery and data mining.  In particular, Data Scientists live and die by their ability to manage data, make sense of data, build predictive models, prototype analytic engines, and make recommendations as well as decisions.  Greater technical details will be presented for a few selected projects at Google.  The goal is to demonstrate how Cloud Computing changes the fundamentals of a Data Scientist in a subtle, but ubiquitous way.  Finally, we will emphasize the role of data scientists in leveraging ensemble of traditional academic disciplines such as computer science, statistics, management science and finance to develop an integrated solution to real-world business problems.