Data Scientists at Work by Sebastian Gutierrez

Author:Sebastian Gutierrez
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Apress, Berkeley, CA

© Sebastian Gutierrez 2014

Sebastian GutierrezData Scientists at Work10.1007/978-1-4302-6599-3_9

9. Jonathan Lenaghan

PlaceIQ

Sebastian Gutierrez1

(1)NY, United States

Jonathan Lenaghan is the Head of Data Science at PlaceIQ, a mobile geolocation intelligence company aggregating and analyzing spatial data for marketers. In early 2014, mobile Internet users eclipsed desktop Internet users for the first time. Projections show that this trend will only accelerate as we move into the future. PlaceIQ is at the forefront of the intersection of mobile ads and location intelligence . Rapid growth at this dynamic intersection brings with it challenges in terms of privacy, data infrastructure, size of data, and the ability to process the data intelligently and put what has been learned from the data to good use.

Lenaghan’s precursory career before venturing into data science spanned theoretical physics research, editing prestigious science journals, and being a quant researcher for algorithmic quantitative equity trading on Wall Street. After taking his PhD in physics from Yale, he conducted research on the statistical properties of strongly interacting quark-gluon plasma at Brookhaven National Laboratory, the Niels Bohr Institute, and the University of Virginia. He served as an editor of two journals of the American Physical Society: Physical Review C (nuclear physics) and Physical Review D (particle physics and cosmology).

Lenaghan stands out as a prime example of a data scientist who has migrated from physical science to data science via quantitative finance. This richly varied background informs Lenaghan’s nuanced appreciation of the risk dimensions of data science, his optimistic pragmatism, and his conviction that useful data science depends critically on a sound engineering foundation.

Sebastian Gutierrez: Tell me about your journey to becoming a data scientist at PlaceIQ.

Jonathan Lenaghan: Prior to joining PlaceIQ as a data scientist in March of 2012, I worked in the financial services industry doing algorithmic trading. Before that, I worked for eight years in academic physics. So I’ve always worked with a great deal of data—although, compared to my algorithmic trading work, my physics work was a bit more weighted toward the analytical than the computational.

Gutierrez: Algorithmic trading sounds like an interesting job with interesting data sets. What drove the transition to PlaceIQ?

Lenaghan: I liked the style of work I was doing in the financial services industry, solving quantitative problems, but it began to feel like I was solving the same problem year after year with slight variations. After five years, I was ready for a new challenge.

The data startup community in New York was growing very rapidly, and I started going to the New York tech meetups. At a meetup in February of 2012, I found myself sitting next to a VC who told me about the sort of companies he was investing in. I told him about the work I was doing with data in algorithmic trading. He told me that a couple of his companies needed a data scientist and suggested I speak with them. The next day I spoke with PlaceIQ’s CTO, Steve Milton, and then a couple of days later with the CEO, Duncan McCall. A week and a half later I started work as PlaceIQ’s head of Data Science.

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