The Data Jockey

It is highly unlikely that ‘Data Jockey’ was what DJ Patil’s parents had in mind when they named him DJ. But it would be highly appropriate. Because DJ Patil is one of the world’s best Data Scientists. So much so that he is credited with co-coining the term Data Scientist in the first place. When Forbes released its Data Scientist list in 2011, DJ Patil came second only next to Google’s Larry Page. Patil says he realised he was ‘pretty good at maths’ when he was in high school. He went on to get a BA in mathematics from the University of California, and finished his PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of Maryland. Since then he has held a number of roles in academia, industry and government. Apart from working at the University of Maryland, eBay, and Skype, Patil’s most famous work has been done at LinkedIn. As the Head of Data products and as a chief scientist at LinkedIn, Patil led the strategical change in making LinkedIn a data driven company and helped it in developing a number of data driven products. As one of the first people to realise that user generated data is the next best thing, Patil worked on products like ‘Jobs You May be Interested In’. He is presently working as a Data Scientist at Greylock ventures, a venture capital firm which uses data to help new start-ups.