Rachel Schutt, Professor
Dr. Rachel Schutt is the Senior Vice President of Data Science at News Corp. Rachel earned a PhD in Statistics from Columbia University, and was a statistician at Google Research for several years. She is an adjunct professor in Columbia’s Department of Statistics where she teaches Introduction to Data Science, and a founding member of the Education Committee for the Institute for Data Sciences and Engineering at Columbia. She has a Masters degree in mathematics from NYU, and a Masters degree in Engineering-Economic Systems and Operations Research from Stanford University. Her undergraduate degree is in Honors Mathematics from the University of Michigan. Rachel is the co-author of the forthcoming book “Doing Data Science” to be published by O’Reilly in October, 2013.
Kayur Patel, Professor
Dr. Kayur Patel works at Google, focusing on helping software engineers better use machine learning. His research interests are in human-computer interaction, software engineering, machine learning and information visualization. He studies how people apply machine learning to solve problems and build software. Guided by this research, he creates new development tools that help programmers more effectively use machine learning algorithms. Kayur has a B.S. in Computer Science and Human Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon, a M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Washington.
Jared Lander, Lab Instructor
Jared Lander is a data science consultant based in New York City. With a masters from Columbia University in statistics and a bachelors from Muhlenberg College in mathematics, he has experience in both academic research and industry. His work for both large and small organizations ranges from music and fund raising to finance and humanitarian relief efforts. He recently became co-organizer of the New York Open Statistical Programming (formerly R) meetup and is the author of an upcoming book aimed at teaching R to Nonstatisticians. A sampling of his projects can be found at http://www.jaredlander.com.
Haolei Wang, Teaching Assistant
Haolei Weng is a third-year PhD student in the statistics department at Columbia. He is currently working with Prof. Feng on high dimensional regression and networks. He is also interested in machine learning and large scale optimization problems. He is trying to be a better programmer among statisticians and a great statistician among programmers. He enjoys rock music a lot, especially britpop. Philosophy confuses him from time to time.
Anna Hurley, Project Coordinator
Anna Hurley is a Senior Research Analyst at Nickelodeon. She studies how humans interact with Nick’s digital properties and helps inform product and programming decisions. Anna joined the class because she wanted to apply data science outside of the corporate setting. As Project Coordinator, she is leveraging her vast non-profit and governmental networks to find relevant and interesting projects for the class.
