Left: Carlos Faham (Sr. Data Scientist at LinkedIn). Right: Anasuya Das (Sr. Data Scientist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center). Photo credits: LinkedIn.

Insight Data Science is honored to have been featured this week in the New York Times article “Where the STEM Jobs Are (and Where They Aren’t)”.

Interviews from Jake Klamka (Insight Founder & CEO) and two alumni, Carlos Faham and Anasuya Das, shed light on how the rapidly growing field of data science is absorbing graduates from STEM domains.

Jake Klamka, a physicist who founded the [Insight] program, kept hearing from Silicon Valley executives that they had considered hiring traditional scientists, but converting them to technologists seemed time-consuming and risky. So Mr. Klamka decided he would start a company to provide scientists a smoother pathway into the tech industry.

Carlos and Anasuya describe their own career moves from academic science into data science careers…

Data science is distinctly different from neuroscience, Dr. Das said, but some of the tools she employs, like a machine-learning technique called artificial neural networks, do take their inspiration from the brain. Her experience points to the larger trend that digital technologies like data science and artificial intelligence are increasingly being used in nearly every discipline.

… and some of the challenges they faced in making that transition.

“It was like hitting a wall running at full speed, really humbling,” [Carlos] recalled. “Interviewing is a muscle and you have to exercise it again and again,” he said. After the [Insight] program, he received six job offers. He accepted the offer from LinkedIn. The range of data-intensive detective work, he said, is “extremely rich” and “it moves so much faster than my previous world.”

Read the full article here.