Instructors

Shaddy Abado is a Data Science Manager at Accenture Digital. Throughout his career his interests have spanned various fields ranging from investigating light-fluid interactions for aero-optics applications to developing data analytics solutions for equipment predictive maintenance, condition based monitoring and Industrial Internet of Things. 

Dr. Abado uses these skills at Accenture to assist companies throughout their digital transformation. He has more than 6 years of experience instructing in graduate professional studies courses. He serves on the board of the Data Science Conference. He has presented research at national conferences and published papers in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings. He received his MSc and PhD in aerospace and mechanical engineering from the University of Notre Dame.
 

Abid Ali has worked in data and analytics for several years at some of the largest consulting firms. He has designed and delivered many large scale data transformations around the world in countries such as US, UK, EU, APAC, and in various industries such as banking, insurance, retail, telecom, travel, consumer packaged goods, and manufacturing. He is currently working in Capgemini as portfolio manager in the global insights and data practice supporting financial services across banking and insurance industries. He leads several internal initiatives and capabilities, and works closely with c-suite executives to devise strategies for migration and transition to modern data platforms.

Abid believes in life-long learning and has acquired several advanced degrees and certifications over the years such as undergraduate in computer sciences, master's in computer sciences (business intelligence and data warehousing), another master's in information and knowledge strategy, an EMBA, a Ph.D. in organizational leadership, and several certifications from Teradata, Celonis, SAFe Agile, Azure, AWS. Ali believes in sharing and contributing knowledge and therefore teaches in top-tier universities in addition to his day job.

Arnie Aronoff is formerly the senior director for human resources at Princeton University and the University of Chicago. He has brought his professional expertise to educational, nonprofit, social service, and other organizations as a consultant, coach, and trainer for over fifteen years.

Mr. Aronoff is an experienced instructor who has been teaching for the Professional Development Program at SSA since 1996. He earned his doctorate from the University of Chicago and pursued advanced training in organizational development from the National Training Laboratories in Applied Behavioral Science (NTL) and the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland.

Dr. Aydin is a decision science professional with 15 years of experience in data science, business analytics, and operations research. She currently leads strategic analytics and technology projects at Caterpillar, Inc. in sales and operations planning: data solutions development, data strategy, and advanced analytics application development in supply chain field. Gizem received the Outstanding Achievement in Analytics award at Caterpillar for customer site maintenance scheduling solution in 2016. She utilizes her diverse background and experience to provide technical strategic leadership and analytics solutions to internal and external teams.

Dr. Aydin earned her MSc and PhD in Industrial Engineering from the University of Oklahoma, research focusing on network flow modeling in freight flow applications. She has dual degree in Industrial Engineering and Computer Engineering, published multiple papers, a book chapter, and presented her work at conferences. She teaches the Python for Analytics course since 2019 Winter quarter in the MSc. Analytics at the University of Chicago Graham School. Her interests include programming, statistics, machine learning, operations management, and supply chain management.

Francisco Azeredo is a financial economist and decision scientist with eleven years of experience working for leading financial and consulting firms in the Chicago area. He is presently a senior vice-president at Northern Trust, working on research and development of quantitative strategies for fixed income and equities at Northern Trust Asset Management.

Prior to joining asset management, Francisco led strategic and quantitative driven projects across Northern Trust's three major business units. His experience included leading analytics projects on foreign exchange global revenue forecast, wealth management client deposit modeling, wealth management digital client behavior modeling, treasury deposit modeling, derivatives and hedging solutions and foreign exchange high-frequency algorithmic execution cost. He also conducted research on foreign exchange algorithmic execution methods and securities lending price modeling.

His prior work experience includes credit risk, operational risk and macroeconomic modeling for stress testing and capital planning, analysis of complex financial instruments, interest rate modeling, and econometric and predictive analysis for litigation matters involving financial institutions and multinational corporations.

His research in financial economics was recognized by leading economists in the Handbook of the Equity Risk Premium, Intermediate Financial Theory, and an encyclopedia of behavior economics. He currently teaches reinforcement learning, statistical analysis, non-linear statistical modeling, and optimization methods in the MSc Analytics at the University of Chicago and has five years of prior experience teaching at Northwestern University, the University of California, Santa Barbara and Riverside. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Dr. Yuri Balasanov is a lecturer at the University of Chicago since 1997. He teaches at Graduate Program on Financial Mathematics (MSFM) and Graduate Program on Analytics (MScA). Dr. Balasanov teaches courses on linear and nonlinear statistical analysis, machine learning, Bayesian methods, artificial intelligence, robotics, fixed income derivatives, mathematical market microstructure. He is also founder and President of Research Software International, Inc. since 1991 and iLykei Teaching Tech Corp since 2015.

Dr. Balasanov earned his Master's degree in Applied Mathematics and Ph.D. in Probability Theory and Mathematical Statistics from the Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia, where he studied under Andrey Kolmogorov and leading members of his school. His primary expertise and research interests are in the area of stochastic modeling, machine learning and artificial intelligence, robotics with applications in various fields including trading, risk management, finance and economics, business analytics, marketing and medical studies. Dr. Balasanov has been a financial industry practitioner for more than 20 years, working at leading financial institutions as head quant, quantitative trader and risk manager. He has lead research teams working on analytical and data driven projects as well as development of software for analytics and quantitative trading.

Gregory Bernstein works as a data scientist for Kinexon Sports and Media, a small branch of a Germany-based company that works with teams in the NBA, NFL, and other professional leagues to monitor athletes' movement and exertion, provide consultation regarding load management, and optimize in-game performance. His work engages in analytical modeling, reporting and visualization, and product development. He earned a BA from Lafayette College in creative writing and economics in 2012 and graduated from the University of Chicago Master of Science in Analytics program in 2019. 

Shree Bharadwaj works at West Monroe, a management consulting company. As a Center of Excellence lead, he advises private equity and venture capital firms and C-level executives on value creation, post-close synergies, and data and analytics (BI/AI) strategies focused on business outcomes. In his previous executive leadership role at Syndigo, he led the data strategy, data science, next-gen platform and M&A integrations. His expertise revolves around driving innovation, standardization, development and operationalization of machine learning models, data engineering at scale using on-premise and cloud platforms, effective data visualizations, model-driven design, and algorithimic thinking.

Bharadwaj was elected to the Global Standards Architecture Board at GS1, where he worked with global industry leaders to develop standards, road maps, and governance and compliance requirements relating to food services, healthcare, retail, supply chain, and CPG/FMCG verticals. His experience spans across multiple industries that include AdTech, EdTech, Fintech, healthcare, MarTech, public safety, retail, and telecom in organizations that range from startups to Fortune 100 companies.

Dr. Arnab Bose is Chief Scientific Officer at Abzooba, a data analytics company. He is a twenty-year industry veteran focused on machine learning and deep learning models for unstructured and structured data. Arnab has extensive industry experience in using data to influence behavioral outcomes in healthcare, retail, finance, and automated vehicle control.

Arnab is an avid writer and has published numerous papers for conferences and academic journals, as well as book chapters. He enjoys public speaking and has given talks on data analytics at universities and industry conferences in the US, Australia, and India. He serves on the board of the financial engineering graduate program at University of Southern California. Arnab holds MS and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from University of Southern California and a BS in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur, India.

Dr. Chaturvedi has over twenty-five years of professional experience at companies such as AT&T Bell Labs, Kraft Foods, Capital One, and Accenture. He has provided consulting services to Bank of America, Fannie Mae, Johnson & Johnson, and Proctor & Gamble. His general research interests include the areas of multivariate analysis methods for Big Data—multi-linear models, information mining, and business insights. He has co-authored the book Mathematical Tools for Applied Multivariate Analysis with the late professor Paul Green (University of Pennsylvania) and Professor J. Douglas Carroll (Rutgers University). He has patented and published analytical methods for direct marketing and information mining, market segmentation, new product development, product positioning, customer loyalty, consumer promotion, Market Mix Optimization, and brand strategy. He completed his PhD from Rutgers University and received his PGDM from IIM Ahmedabad in India.

Shahbaz Chaudhary has over fifteen years of experience developing software systems for financial companies, specializing, most recently, in trading systems. His free and open-source tools are widely used on Wall Street. Three years ago, he made the switch to data science. He graduated from the University of Chicago's Master of Science in Analytics program, where his team won top honors for their capstone project. He is currently working at Charles Schwab as a manager of data science.

Brian Craft is a seasoned data scientist with eight years of industry experience. He is currently a Data scientist at Conagra Brands, where he is focused on scaling their machine learning capabilities and developing models to understand consumer purchase behavior and identify emerging ingredient and flavor trends. Previously he worked on the Data Science team at Cars.com where he helped develop a pipeline to deploy machine learning models to production for use on their web and mobile properties, while also developing models around vehicle churn, pricing and search order. Prior to that he worked in political consulting, analyzing demographic and media spend data for senatorial and congressional campaigns. He holds a BA in Economics and a MS in Data Science with a focus on Computational Methods from DePaul University.

Sebastien Donadio has been working in the fintech industry for the last decade. He has a wide range of professional experience, including serving as Chief Technology Officer at TradAir, where he leads the technology team, as the head of software engineering at HC Technologies, developing quantitative trading software for Sun Trading, acting as partner at AienTech, a high-frequency trading hedge fund, and working as a technological leader in creating operating systems for the Department of Defense. He also has research experience with Bull, and as IT credit risk manager for Société Générale while in France. Donadio has taught various computer science courses over the past fifteen years at the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, Columbia University, the University of Chicago, and New York University. Among these courses are the following: Advanced Financial Computing, Advanced Programming, Computer Architecture, Machine Learning, Operating Systems, Parallel Architecture, and Real-Time Smart Systems.

As director of analytics programs at the University of Chicago, Greg Green architects and leads programs that strategically apply analytics to solve complex industry problems with greater speed and impact. 

Throughout his professional career, Greg has used his expertise in digital strategies, business analytics, and new product development to drive rapid revenue growth and accelerate business transformation. His previous work bringing innovation to an academic environment included authoring a Marketing Analytics course, designing a prerequisite applied statistics course for full- and part-time programs, and serving as a lecturer for Marketing Analytics and a Foundational Statistics Bootcamp at Northwestern University.

Greg’s industry roles include chief analytics officer at Harland Clarke Holdings, director at Google, EVP/managing director at Publicis Groupe, and analytics practice lead at PwC. Greg’s patented cloud-based media analytics platform was highlighted in Harvard Business Review and Fast Company.

Greg holds a doctor of philosophy in mathematics from Claremont Graduate School and a master of science in statistics from Michigan State University. 

As Head of Industry at Google, Kevin Hartman and his team partner with major advertisers, creative agencies, and media companies to develop digital solutions that build businesses and brands. His roster of client work includes brand names such as Nestle, General Mills, Kellogg's, Anheuser-Busch, MillerCoors, Motorola, the United States Postal Service, Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Del Monte, Boeing, Qualcomm, Wagner USA, ABN Amro, Bank of America, and the Chicago Board of Trade, among others. He holds a BA from the University of Notre Dame, an MPP from the University of Chicago's Harris School, and an MBA with honors from the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business. 

Nick Kadochnikov is a Distinguished Engineer and Director within IBM Global Business Services, where he is focusing on applying AI solutions to transform business processes. These AI solutions combine the power of Machine Learning, Advanced Analytics and Big Data with Natural Language Processing and Computer Vision to enable intelligent, data-driven decision making based on the multitude of both structured and unstructured data sources. Nick has successfully created AI solutions, covering the majority of enterprise operations, including supply-chain, sales, marketing, finance, procurement and legal functions. Currently, Nick is primarily focused on applying AI to solve Healthcare problems, leading to better patients' outcomes, improving population health and improving the efficiencies of clinical trials.

Wendy Klusendorf has over twenty years of experience in manufacturing, supply chain, and procurement. She graduated from the University of Chicago Master of Science in Analytics program in 2016 and has been working for the university since 2017. She currently works at Pregis, LLC as the procurement manager.

Dr. Lam is a statistical researcher and developer. He has more than twenty-five years of applying data science in software development, property and casualty insurance, and retail financial service industries. He has strong expertise in developing statistical algorithms, analyzing person data, and educating data scientists. He is currently a Principal Research Statistician Developer at the SAS Institute and on the faculty of the University of Chicago and the Illinois Institute of Technology. Prior to joining SAS, he directed the software development at SPSS; sophisticated Allstate's insurance rating plans and help discover their most valuable customers and developed new performance assessment models for recruiting and retaining retail financial staff at the Chase Bank. He has co-published the book Using Data Analysis to Improve Student Learning: Toward 100% Proficiency. He holds a PhD in Statistics from the University of Chicago.

Roger is the CEO and Managing Director at NLITX. NLITX uses data and analytics to solve strategic problems. Roger also currently is a Lecturer at the University of Chicago. He teaches Leadership Skills in the Master of Science in Analytics Program. Previously Roger was VP, Analytics and Customer Operations at Entytle. Entytle provides a SaaS tool supporting customer installed base automated sales with AI and machine learning. Roger has also worked at Gartner, Sagence, Booz & Co, PwC, Diamond Management & Technology Partners and the Boston Consulting Group. Roger is active in the data, analytics and technology communities in the Chicago area. He attends many MeetUps, roundtables and industry events. Roger founded and chairs the Chicago Booth Big Data & Analytics Roundtable and is a board member of the Chicago City Data User Group. Roger is on the Industry Advisory Board of the Chicago Analytics Consortium, formed by the major universities in Chicago that provide analytics educations.

Roger has experience speaking in many venues, including providing the opening address at the Predictive Analytics & Business Insights 2015 Conference in Chicago. He has also spoken at the Executives Club of Chicago Leadership Circle, the Chicago Booth Innovation Roundtable, DePaul Predictive Analytics Club, UIC Center for Research in Information Management (CRIM) Speaker Series, Indiana University Informatics and Computing Student Association Catalyst Conference and UIUC Speaker Series. He also was a panel moderator for University of Chicago GradUCon on Careers in Data Science, UIC's CRIM Analytics Symposium on Academic-Industry Analytics Partnerships and at General Assembly on Intro to Data Science. Roger holds an MBA with focus in Finance and Statistics from the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. He also received a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Wisconsin - Madison.

Mrs. Mei Najim has been providing advanced analytics consulting services to the property and casualty insurance industry since 2018, with over fifteen years of hands-on analytics experience in the industry. Since 2007, she has been mainly leading and working on various predictive analytics and data science projects to develop advanced analytics capability. She also has extensive statistics, machine learning, and data mining experience dealing with large and complex data sets.

She has been a frequent speaker at various industry conferences to share her expertise in predictive analytics, machine learning, and data science. She holds a BS in actuarial science from Hunan University and two MS degrees in applied mathematics and in statistics, from Washington State University. Najim is a member of the American Statistical Association and a Certified Specialist in Predictive Analytics (CSPA) of the Casualty Actuarial Society.

Coming Soon 

Dr. Utku Pamuksuz is a data analytics researcher with expertise in data science, business analytics, applied mathematics, and machine/deep learning. He has taught analytics courses at the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. He has been an invited speaker including keynote sessions in academic and professional seminars in Europe, Asia, and the US on the application and development of data analytics in the areas of management, finance, strategy, healthcare, e-commerce, and quantitative marketing. He holds a PhD from UIUC and an MSc in computer science from Northwestern University. Dr. Pamuksuz has led data science teams at several Fortune 500 companies and co-founded Inference Analytics in 2018. He currently works as a computational scientist at Argonne National Laboratory.

Over more than 30 years, Don has served in a variety of assignments that utilize research and data analysis to provide impact to major CPG, Retail and Foodservice companies. Don currently serves as an independent consultant and Lecturer at the University of Chicago, Board President of Chicago Chapter of the American Statistical Association and as Adjunct Professor in Business Analytics at DePaul University. As Senior VP, Analytics for HAVI Group, Don helped pioneer new analytics implementations for McDonald's and Coca-Cola. Prior to joining HAVI Group, Don was Director of Advertising Analytics for Sears, Roebuck & Co. - bringing cutting edge analytics of Sears' media (tv, radio, print) support to drive ROI based decision making. Don has also managed research and analytics for several major brands for Kraft Foods and site location analytics and modeling for Hallmark Cards. Additionally, Don was an active duty U.S. Army officer for 11 years - serving in troop leadership positions in South Korea, Germany and the U.S. Don graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point with a BS in Engineering. Additionally, he has an MSE in Operations Research from The University of Texas at Austin and MBA from the University of Kansas.

Dr. Nalini Polavarapu has been with Bayer for over ten years and leads data science strategy for a global team of analytical and IT professionals, specialized in machine learning, operations research, and cloud analytics to deliver better products to market faster through data science. Nalini also serves as the senior leader on the Data Science Center of Excellence Council. Over the course of her career, she has initiated multiple external partnerships and collaborations with start-ups, large corporations, and universities. She was the first data scientist at Monsanto and played a key role in building its world-class global data science program. Nalini has a PhD and dual MSc in computer science and bioinformatics from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. Nalini has authored and co-authored several analytical patents, research articles in leading scientific journals, as well as book chapters on high throughput data analysis and applications.

Ashish Pujari is a leader in data and analytics, IT strategy, and technology consulting. As a director of analytics at GLG, he leads the design and implementation of business intelligence, predictive analytics, and visualization. Prior to joining GLG, he served as an AVP of analytics architecture for CNA Insurance, where he was responsible for insurance analytics platforms and data strategy.

Pujari specializes in big-data analytics, cloud computing, algorithm development, application and database design, decision management, and visualization technologies. He has been involved in technology consulting in finance, banking, insurance, and communications domains for clients in Europe, North America, and Asia.

He earned a Master of Science in Analytics from the University of Chicago and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Rourkela. His research interests include parallel and distributed systems and machine learning.

Read an interview with Ashish Pujari on the importance of data today ›

Dr. Rafael Vescovi currently works at Argonne National Laboratory on the Aurora 2021 exascale computer. He is responsible the implementation of the Connectome project. He has a wide variety of professional experience, starting by his formation in physics and masters and phd on applied physics. Raf has taught various physics and computer science courses for the past ten years. On a different side, Raf is also responsible to train Scuba diving Instructors on his spare time and hold different leadership positions at other institutions.

Jonathan Williams has been working in statistical consulting for ten years and currently manages data science teams at Civis Analytics, working on behalf of public sector clients. Previously, he worked as a vice president at Compass Lexecon, providing and supporting expert reports and expert testimony for litigation. Jonathan earned his BA and MA degrees in statistics from the University of Chicago ('07, '08) and is also a recent alumni of the Master of Science in Analytics program ('16). He also co-instructs courses for the Graham School certificate programs with Professor Yuri Balasanov. His focuses include data visualization, technical writing, financial valuation, mortgage portfolio modeling, and damages estimation.

As Divisional Vice President, Michael Xiao currently leads the Enterprise Data Science organization at Health Care Service Corporation, which operates the Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans in Illinois, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas. Since joining HCSC in 2016, Michael has built and scaled multiple large data science teams. His current team creates and drives the company's overall machine learning and AI strategy and roadmap, serves as the center of excellence for advanced analytics, and develops cutting edge AI products and solutions, including natural language processing and computer vision. His teams have improved the health and wellbeing of HCSC's more than 16 million members by making health care more affordable, improving the quality of care, and enhancing overall member experience by delivering tens of millions in value for its members and communities. He has previously worked at large payers in various roles including data science, financial forecasting, pricing, product management, and project management.

He is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries, a Member of the American Academy of Actuaries, holds a Bachelor's degree in Economics and Film Modified with Computer Science from Dartmouth College, and completed his MBA with honors at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Areas of interest for him include product management and AI adoption and change management, computer vision, and model interpretability and explainability.

Igor holds a PhD in Theoretical Physics and a MS in Computer Science. Igor currently works as a Computational Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory. Previously, Igor worked as a scientist for LIGO project and participated in the data analysis that resulted in the discovery of gravitational waves.