Data Minds #4 — Ian Blumenfeld

In this episode, I interview Ian Blumenfeld (Head of DS at Clover Health).

You will learn:

• Ian’s lessons learned as a startup founder
• Ian’s thoughts on data science as a service
• Importance of domain expertise in Data Science & how to build expertise
• The the tools used by Clover Health’s data science teams
• How Clover Health tackles the challenge of small sample sizes and slow operational feedback loops (getting data can take weeks…)
• How Ian defines data science
• How to hire data science unicorns

Meet Ian Blumenfeld, Head of Data Science at Clover Health

Ian Blumenfeld grew up in Toronto Canada and took a vocational career test in high school that was inconclusive (this freaked his guidance counselor; he was the only student in the school that the test would not make a prediction for).

Vocational test results aside, Ian would go on to study Physics in undergrad, get his PHD at Stanford, work at Archimedes (the Xerox PARC for healthcare data science), found a company called InSample in 2012 and become Chief Data Scientist at Clover Health 2014. Ian’s team is responsible for building Clover’s functional expertise in predictive modeling and machine learning.

Ian received a Bachelor of Applied Science in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto and a PhD in Physics from Stanford University.

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Selected Links from the Episode

• Why is a Data Scientist
• Building Data Science in Healthcare
• Clover Health is Hiring Data Scientists

People Mentioned

• Josh Wills
• Otis Anderson

Show Notes

• Childhood aspirations:
  No clear childhood goal. Loved building things / solving problems. Childhood joys: legos, strategy video games, math and computer programming. High school vocational test = inconclusive :O
• Ian’s path to data science:
  Grew up in Toronto => Physics at University of Toronto => PHD at Stanford + plasma wave field accelerator experiments => thesis supervisor passes away => academia to industry => Archimedes (akin to being at Xerox during their computer history’s golden age) => Founding InSample (2012) => Chief Data Scientist at Clover Health (2014)
• Lessons Learned from being a startup founder
• Prediction for DS as a service products
• Importance of Domain Expertise in Data Science
• DS toolkit at Clover Health: Python, SQL, PosPostgreSQL, Mode Analytics

Subscribe to Data Minds

Get notified of new interviews with top data minds from around the world, subscribe to Data Minds.