The World Bank (CTR Open Finances, DEC’s Data Group, WBI Innovation, and TWICT) cordially invites you to attend the following information session:

Turning Big Data into Big Impact

Thursday, October 25, 2:00 PM to 3:30 PM, in MC 13-121

[Space Limited: RSVP by Wednesday, October 24 5 PM]

Coffee will be served.

#BigDataImpact  #WBFinances 

Presenters:  

• Jake Porway- Founder, DataKind & Data Scientist, New York Times
• Anthony Goldbloom- CEO, Kaggle

Discussants:      

• Randeep Sudan- ICT Sector Manager, World Bank
• Aleem Walji- Innovation Labs Director, World Bank
• Neil Fantom-  Development Data Group Manager, World Bank

Moderator:       

• Prasanna Lal Das- Open Finances Program Lead, World Bank

Description:

The potential value of “Big Data” has piqued the interest of development practitioners and technologists alike.  How can development-focused organizations use or experiment with Big Data to enhance and improve their own operations to ultimately help reach socially-driven goals?  Join our presenters Jake Porway and Anthony Goldbloom who will share their cutting-edge “Big Data” approaches, expertise, and use cases.

Join us to learn more about the practical and tactical side of Big Data and to explore possible scenarios like: Can a prediction model or early warning system be created to assure development funds are being used properly and ultimately stop fraud and corruption before it occurs? Can big data (including the use of on-the-ground tools like high speed SMS surveys) be used for “real-time” indications of poverty in the world to better inform development project decisions?

Presenter Bios:

Jake Porway is a machine learning and technology enthusiast who loves nothing more than seeing good values in data. He is the founder and executive director of DataKind, an organization that brings together leading data scientists with high impact social organizations to better collect, analyze, and visualize data in the service of humanity.

Jake was most recently the data scientist in the New York Times R&D lab and remains an active member of the data science community, bringing his technical experience from his past work with groups like NASA, DARPA, Google, and Bell Labs to bear on the social sector. Jake's work has been featured in leading academic journals and conferences (PAMI, ICCV), the Guardian, the Stanford Social Innovation Review, and he has been honored as a 2011 PopTech Social Innovation Fellow and a 2012 National Geographic Emerging Explorer. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Columbia University and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Statistics from UCLA.

Anthony Goldbloom is the founder and CEO of Kaggle. Before founding Kaggle, Anthony worked in the macroeconomic modeling areas of the Reserve Bank of Australia and before that the Australian Treasury.

He holds a first class honours degree in economics and econometrics from the University of Melbourne and has published in The Economist magazine and the Australian Economic Review.

In 2011, Forbes Magazine cited Anthony as one of the 30 under 30 in technologyand Fast Company featured him as one of the innovative thinkers who are changing the future of business.