Sophie Lellis-Petrie

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Data Scientist

Warner Bros. Entertainment

Combines descriptive and inferential statistics in order to have a holistic understanding of the data in order to fit the best models to the data. Has a Bachelor of Science in Statistics from the University of California, Los Angeles and pursuing Masters of Applied Statistics with strong foundation in statistics applied knowledge in capstone courses in multiple disciplines. Continues to grow statistics portfolio in the Work Force Analytics group in Warner Brothers.

Joe Gardner

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CEO

VentureDevs

Joe is a multi-time entrepreneur with eight years of experience founding, funding, growing, and selling technology companies. Joe’s experience as an investor, successful founder, and business operator has led him to create a prolific network of entrepreneurs, investors, and operators in the SoCal, Silicon Valley, and Northeast ecosystems. He is currently the CEO of VentureDevs and managing partner at Advantage Ventures.

Patrick Prothro

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Data Scientist

Latham & Watkins

There is an interesting story behind all data. Whether it be sports, education, etc. I'm always looking to find the meaning behind the numbers. Analyze, visualize, and explain what is going on behind the scenes. It's always been a passion of mine to find the unique answers to a puzzle with multiple solutions. Using data I've been able to find those unique answers that many may have overlooked in order to improve business efficiency.

My specialties include using a broad spectrum of software programs , advanced statistics, and an acumen for problem solving to find the answers buried in a company's data. I am currently an analyst at an E-Commerce Company and plan to enter the field of Machine Learning and Data Science.

Jingyi Jessica Li

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Assistant Professor

University of California

Jingyi Jessica Li is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics and the Department of Human Genetics at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She is also a faculty member in the Interdepartmental Ph.D. Program in Bioinformatics and a member in the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center (JCCC) Gene Regulation Research Program Area. Prior to joining UCLA in 2013, Jessica obtained her Ph.D. degree from the Interdepartmental Group in Biostatistics at University of California, Berkeley. Jessica received her B.S. (summa cum laude) from the Department of Biological Sciences and Technology at Tsinghua University, China in 2007. Jessica and her students focus on developing statistical and computational methods motivated by important questions in biomedical sciences and abundant information in big genomic and health related data. On the statistical methodology side, her research interests include association measures, high-dimensional variable selection, and classification metrics. On the biomedical application side, her research interests include next-generation RNA sequencing, comparative genomics, and information flow in the central dogma. Jessica is the recipient of the Hellman Fellowship (2015), the PhRMA Foundation Research Starter Grant in Informatics (2017), the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2018), and the Johnson & Johnson WiSTEM2D Math Scholar Award (2018).

Nick Acosta

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Developer Advocate

IBM

Before becoming an AI Advocate at IBM, Nick studied computer science at Purdue University and the University of Southern California, and was a high performance computing consultant for Hewlett-Packard in Grenoble, France. He now specializes in machine learning and interacting with other data scientists of various communities, startups, and enterprises in order to help them succeed on IBM’s data science platform. He has a strong interest in data science education and all things Kardashian.

Brian Owens

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Chief Information Officer

Bendcare

Brian is a successful global executive, with more than 25 years driving the development, growth and success of data and software companies in both North America and Europe. In addition to his experience as a technology leader, he has been a Chief Executive Officer, Chief Revenue Officer, and Chief Operations Officer for high growth companies in the SaaS Software space. His former clients include an impressive roster of Fortune 1,000 organizations including GSK, Johnson & Johnson, Amgen, Bristol-Meyers Squibb and other global entities who have leveraged complex data as a key value drivers for their organization and customers.

Today he leads the data sciences efforts for Bendcare, the largest Rheumatology super group in the USA. His role includes strategic oversight for the Columbus Data & Informatics Platform which provides clinical insights for more than 500,000 patients on journey, This proprietary and innovative platform will grow to more than 2 million patients in 2019, and contains complex analytics from multiple data sources including 2 Electronic Health Records systems, pharmacies, lab providers, central purchasing organizations and other sources. Its strategic information provides critical insights to physicians, patients, pharmaceutical companies and payors nationwide.

Louis Sapia

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Data Architect

Louis Sapia is a Data Architect who designs, develops and implements data analytics solutions that provide actionable insights to reduce costs, improve outcomes and provide forecasting models that lead to improved business performance. Louis provides expertise in various roles including data modeling, application design and development, data integration and visualization.

In addition to his career as a Data Architect, Louis teaches database technologies at universities and colleges including the University of Connecticut, Central Connecticut State University and, currently, Hillsborough Community College in Tampa Florida. Also, Louis provides training in SQL for corporate businesses.

The Role of SQL in Data Science

Relational databases are the most common platform for data storage and the SQL language is used to communicate work with the data. This session will explain the importance of relational databases for structural storage of data and using SQL to retrieve it.