Rayid Ghani (born 1977) is a Distinguished Career Professor in the Machine Learning Department (in the School of Computer Science) and the Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy at

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institu ...

. Previously, he was the director of the Center for Data Science and Public Policy, research associate professor in the department of computer science, and a senior fellow at the

Harris School of Public Policy The University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy is the public policy graduate school of the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois, United States. It is located on the University of Chicago's main campus in Hyde Park. The school ...

at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

. He was also the co-founder of Edgeflip, an analytics startup that grew out of the Obama 2012 Campaign, focused on

social media Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the Content creation, creation, information exchange, sharing and news aggregator, aggregation of Content (media), content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongs ...

products for

non-profits A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, not-for-profit organization, or simply a nonprofit, is a non-governmental (private) legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public, or so ...

, advocacy groups, and charities. In September 2019, it was announced that he will be leaving the University of Chicago and joining Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science and Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy. Prior to that, Rayid was the Chief Scientist of the Obama 2012 Election Campaign and focused on using data science, machine learning, and technology to improve fundraising, volunteer mobilization, voter registration, persuasion, and turnout. Ghani started and runs the Eric & Wendy Schmid
Data Science for Social Good Summer Fellowship
He's also the co-founder of Coleridge Initiative, a nonprofit organization working with governments to ensure that data and evidence is used more effectively for policymaking.

Education and career

Ghani completed his schooling at the Karachi Grammar School, in

Karachi, Pakistan Karachi is the capital city of the Administrative units of Pakistan, province of Sindh, Pakistan. It is the List of cities in Pakistan by population, largest city in Pakistan and 12th List of largest cities, largest in the world, with a popul ...

. Ghani completed his graduate studies in the machine learning department at

with

Tom M. Mitchell Tom Michael Mitchell (born August 9, 1951) is an American computer scientist and the Founders University Professor at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). He is a founder and former chair of the Machine Learning Department at CMU. Mitchell is known ...

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

and text classification and received his undergraduate degrees in computer science and mathematics from

University of the South The University of the South, familiarly known as Sewanee (), is a private Episcopal liberal arts college in Sewanee, Tennessee, United States. It is owned by 28 southern dioceses of the Episcopal Church, and its School of Theology is an off ...

. Before his role at the University of Chicago, he was the chief scientist of the Obama 2012 Campaign. Before that, he was a senior research scientist and director of analytics research at Accenture Labs, where he led a technology research team focused on applied R&D in analytics, machine learning, and

data mining Data mining is the process of extracting and finding patterns in massive data sets involving methods at the intersection of machine learning, statistics, and database systems. Data mining is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and ...

for large-scale and emerging business problems.

Policy efforts

Ghani has been actively working with government agencies and non-profits on designing AI and Machine Learning Systems to help tackle societal problems in public health, criminal justice, social services, education, economic development, and workforce development He has also testified in front of the US Senate in 2023 and the US House of Representatives in 2020, on AI Governance and Regulation.

Research contributions

Ghani's research focuses on developing and applying machine learning, data science, and artificial intelligence methods to large-scale social problems in areas such as education, healthcare, economic development, criminal justice, energy, transportation, and public safety. His work has previously focused on text analytics, fundraising, volunteer, and voter mobilization using analytics, social media, and machine learning., and data mining. Rayid's research contributions have been in the areas of text mining,

co-training Co-training is a machine learning algorithm used when there are only small amounts of labeled data and large amounts of unlabeled data. One of its uses is in text mining for search engines. It was introduced by Avrim Blum and Tom Mitchell in 1998 ...

, active learning, consumer behavior modeling, and fraud detection. His research focus has been on 1) dealing with bias and fairness issues in machine learning and AI, 2) designing Human-AI collaborative systems that support people in making decisions, and 3) evaluating AI systems to focus on the entire workflow and outcomes He has given

keynote speech A keynote in public speaking is a talk that establishes a main underlying theme. In corporate or commercial settings, greater importance is attached to the delivery of a keynote speech or keynote address. The keynote establishes the framework fo ...

es on Analytics and the Presidential Elections (for example at Predictive Analytics World, Digital Leaders Forum,

, and CeBIT Australia), on Business Applications of Data Mining, and Data Science for Social Good.

Selected publications

* Big Data and Social Science: A Practical Guide to Methods and Tools. Editors: Ian Foster, Rayid Ghani, Ron Jarmin, Frauke Kreuter, Julia Lane. CRC Press 2016. * Empirical observation of negligible fairness–accuracy trade-offs in machine learning for public policy. Kit Rodolfa, Hemank Lamba, Rayid Ghani. Nature Machine Intelligence 2021. * Explainable machine learning for public policy: Use cases, gaps, and research directions. Kasun Amarasinghe, Kit T. Rodolfa, Hemank Lamba, Rayid Ghani. Data and Policy 2023. * Data Mining for Business Applications. Editors: Carlos Soares, Rayid Ghani. Book. IOS Press 2010. * Mining the Web to Add Semantics to Retail Data Mining. R. Ghani. Invited Paper. Web Mining: From Web to Semantic Web. Springer Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 3209. Berendt, B.; Hotho, A.; Mladenic, D.; van Someren, M.; Spiliopoulou, M.; Stumme, G. (Eds.) 2004

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Ghani, Rayid Living people American computer scientists Carnegie Mellon University alumni Carnegie Mellon University faculty American artificial intelligence researchers Machine learning researchers Barack Obama 2012 presidential campaign University of Chicago faculty 1977 births Muhajir people Karachi Grammar School alumni Pakistani emigrants to the United States