Dhanurjay "DJ" Patil (born August 3, 1974) is an American
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...
and
computer scientist
A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science.
Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...
who served as the Chief
Data Scientist
Data science is an interdisciplinary academic field that uses statistics, scientific computing, scientific methods, processing, scientific visualization, algorithms and systems to extract or extrapolate knowledge from potentially noisy, struct ...
of the United States
Office of Science and Technology Policy
The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) is a department of the United States government, part of the Executive Office of the President of the United States, Executive Office of the President (EOP), established by United States Congres ...
from 2015 to 2017. He is the Head of Technology for Devoted Health.
He previously served as the Vice President of Product at
RelateIQ, which was acquired by
Salesforce.com, as Chief Product Officer of
Color Labs, and as Head of Data Products and Chief Scientist of
LinkedIn
LinkedIn () is an American business and employment-oriented Social networking service, social network. It was launched on May 5, 2003 by Reid Hoffman and Eric Ly. Since December 2016, LinkedIn has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft. ...
. His father,
Suhas Patil, is a
venture capitalist
Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in terms of number ...
and the founder of
Cirrus Logic
Cirrus Logic Inc. is an American fabless semiconductor company, fabless semiconductor supplier that specializes in analog, mixed-signal, and audio Digital signal processor, DSP integrated circuits (ICs). Since 1998, the company's headquarters have ...
.
Early life and education
Patil attended
Kennedy Middle School,
Monta Vista High School
Monta Vista High School is a four-year public high school in Cupertino, California. Part of the Fremont Union High School District, the school serves most of the area of western Cupertino. In 2020, Monta Vista was ranked by ''Newsweek'' as the ...
and
De Anza College, all in
Cupertino, California
Cupertino ( ) is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States, directly west of San Jose, California, San Jose on the western edge of the Santa Clara Valley with portions extending into the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The ...
.
While at Kennedy, he participated in a student exchange program, visiting
Toyokawa
is a Cities of Japan, city in the eastern part of Aichi Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 183,930 in 72,949 households, and a population density of 1,141 persons per km2. The total area of the city is . Toyokawa, famou ...
, Cupertino's sister city in Japan, in 1988. In high school, he often got into trouble and graduated in 1992 near the bottom of his class. He followed his girlfriend to
De Anza Community College, which he attended for one year. He earned a
B.A. in
mathematics
Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...
from
Earl Warren College at
University of California, San Diego
The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego in communications material, formerly and colloquially UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California, United States. Es ...
. He received a
PhD
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...
in applied mathematics from the
University of Maryland College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences. While a faculty member at
University of Maryland College Park
The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1856, UMD i ...
, he used open datasets published by
NOAA
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA ) is an American scientific and regulatory agency charged with forecasting weather, monitoring oceanic and atmospheric conditions, charting the seas, conducting deep-sea exploratio ...
to improve numerical weather forecasting.
Career
Patil has held positions at
LinkedIn
LinkedIn () is an American business and employment-oriented Social networking service, social network. It was launched on May 5, 2003 by Reid Hoffman and Eric Ly. Since December 2016, LinkedIn has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft. ...
,
Greylock Partners,
Skype
Skype () was a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for IP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also had instant messaging, file transfer, ...
,
PayPal
PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support E-commerce payment system, online money transfers; it serves as an electronic alter ...
, and
eBay
eBay Inc. ( , often stylized as ebay) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that allows users to buy or view items via retail sales through online marketplaces and websites in 190 markets worldwide. ...
.
2004
In 2004, Patil worked in the Advanced Systems and Concepts Office in the
Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD, or DOD) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government charged with coordinating and supervising the six U.S. armed services: the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Space Force, ...
. He served as the project leader for the Threat Anticipation Project. His role was to anticipate threats connected to and surrounding terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and failed states (with an emphasis on human rights violations), employing
social network analysis
Social network analysis (SNA) is the process of investigating social structures through the use of networks and graph theory. It characterizes networked structures in terms of ''nodes'' (individual actors, people, or things within the network) ...
to help anticipate these threats.
Patil described himself as part of “the second wave of people”
who were to use data to detect signalled noise, a concern which grew following the 9/11 attacks.
2011
While a data-scientist-in-residence at Greylock Partners, Patil produced ''Building Data Science Teams''. The book provides advice and strategies on creating data science teams in business and technology. It was published by O'Reilly Media.
2012
Patil wrote ''Data Jujitsu--The art of turning data into product'', also while a data-scientist-in-residence at Greylock Partners. The book gives instructions as to solving data science problems and whether they are "worth solving" at all. It was also published by O'Reilly Media.
2015–2017
On February 18, 2015, the White House announced Patil would be the first U.S. Chief Data Scientist (Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Data Policy and Chief Data Scientist). In addresses to the public, Patil explained: "The mission of the U.S. Chief Data Scientist, simply put, is to responsibly unleash the power of data to benefit all Americans." He added that his team's priority was to do so by creating data.
In a memorandum on February 20, 2015, entitled “Unleashing the Power of Data to Serve the American People”, Patil outlined his goals as Chief Data Scientist:
*Providing vision on how to provide a maximum social return on federal data.
*Creating nationwide data policies that enable shared services and forward-leaning practices to advance our nation's leadership in the data age.
*Working with agencies to establish best practices for data management and ensure the long-term sustainability of databases.
*Recruiting and retaining the best minds in data science for public service to address these data science objectives and act as conduits among the government, academia, and industry.
In his tenure, Patil helped launch the White House's Police Data Initiative as well as the White House's Data-Driven Justice Initiative, collecting data on police activities, and worked on the
Precision Medicine Initiative, aiming to build the largest database on genetic information.
Law Enforcement
In 2015, President Obama initiated The
President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing in response to the Ferguson shootings in 2014. Included were the Police Data Initiative and the Data-Driven Justice Initiative.
=Police Data Initiative
=
The Police Data Initiative aimed to build trust between the police and their communities by releasing data sets on “stops and searches, uses of force, officer-involved shootings, or other police actions.”
Open data was also thought to increase accountability within the police. The initiative had gathered 126 jurisdictions across the country.
The information would enable investigation into patterns of injustice as well as the ability to see if systems in place were wanted or working. Police departments struggled to release their data, primarily because it was not “collected well”, as Patil had mentioned in an interview. Disorganized datasets had prevented accurate assessments. Patil proposed that this was due to the absence of a dedicated technician whose purpose is to organize the data.
Efforts were taken to improve coding abilities of police superintendents and homogenizing organization across the 18,000 jurisdictions on board.
More than 170 datasets were released at the start of the initiative in 2015.
=Data-Driven Justice Initiative
=
With open police data, Patil saw that data helped track law enforcement actions’ disproportionate interactions with minorities, the poor and those with mental health concerns. In a memorandum to the American people, Patil said, “if all the data from law enforcement were effectively captured, analyzed, and shared, imagine how the effective and analysis of data could advance proven reforms, increase efficiency, and prevent injustice.”.
Efforts to decrease the injustice is considered the Data-Driven Justice Initiative (DDJ).
DDJ aimed to help governments from the county to the state level to filter low-level offenders and those with mental illness from higher level offenders and the criminal system at large. Changing the approach to pre-trial incarceration would allow low-risk offenders to shorten jail time especially if they cannot afford bail.
At its start in 2015, more than 91 million people are covered by the DDJ.
Medicine
=Precision Medicine Initiative
=
Patil had a special interest in using data to improve the medical field by way of the Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI). PMI aimed to build the largest database of genomic information to increase understanding of cancer treatments, chronic disease, and rare diseases
The initiative was started as there is not a current dataset in which analyses and correlations can be made across gender and ethnic diversities. This would help with curing diseases but also understand the health of the general population. Patil had often stated that it would be helpful because one may very well be able to see what diseases are not actually rare, but very common. A key issue in PMI that Patil worked on was of trust.
Considering vulnerability and the issue of ethics that arises in pursuing an initiative PMI, Patil sought to develop workshops and “listening sessions” to hear specific concerns regarding the initiative. Based on the feedback, Patil devised the “privacy and trust principles.”
The first principle in its section entitled “Data Sharing, Access, and Use”, is that “data access, use, and sharing should be permitted for authorized purposes only."
Concerned with maintaining these principles grew for the future as Patil addressed concerns about the effect of American Healthcare Act (
AHCA) on contributions to PMI. He feared that, with the AHCA, people will be scared to donate their genomic information because it will expose pre-existing conditions. While there are protections in place to secure data privacy such as the
Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act
The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (, GINA ), is an Act of Congress in the United States designed to prohibit some types of genetic discrimination. The act bars the use of genetic information in health insurance and employm ...
(GINA) instilled in 2008, Patil expressed a worry that the Act would not be heeded.
2017–present
Patil was a member of the
National Infrastructure Advisory Council before resigning in August 2017.
In October 2017, it was reported that Patil had joined the executive team of Devoted Health. He is currently the Head of Technology.
On November 14, 2017, Patil announced that he was joining
Venrock as an adviser.
In February 2023, Patil became a general partner at
GreatPoint Ventures.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Patil, DJ
Living people
1969 births
University of California, San Diego alumni
University of Maryland, College Park alumni
Obama administration personnel
Office of Science and Technology Policy officials
De Anza College alumni
People from Cupertino, California
University of Maryland, College Park faculty
American data scientists
American people of Indian descent
American people of Marathi descent