US names Dhanurjay Patil as chief data scientist
Patil has graduated from the University of California in San Diego
Washington: Dhanurjay ‘DJ’ Patil, a Person of Indian Origin and co-author of the article Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century published in Harvard Business Review, has been named as the first chief data scientist and deputy chief technology officer.
Interestingly, the term data scientist, coined in 2008, has often been credited to Patil and Jeff Hammerbacher, who back then were chiefs of data and analytics efforts at LinkedIn and Facebook respectively.
Patil has graduated from the University of California in San Diego with a Bachelor’s degree in mathematics. In 2001, he did his PhD in applied mathematics from University of Maryland, College Park.
In his new role, Patil will “work on the administration’s Precision Medicine Initiative, which focuses on advances in data and healthcare to provide clinicians with new tools, knowledge, and therapies to select which treatments will work best for which patients, while protecting patient privacy,” a statement from the White House said.
The White House statement added, “As a doctoral student and faculty member at the University of Maryland, DJ used open datasets published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to make major improvements in numerical weather forecasting.”
His father Suhas Patil was born in Jamshedpur and completed his bachelor’s degree in engineering from the IIT Kharagpur.
