Dhanurjay "DJ" Patil (born August 3, 1974) is an American mathematician and computer scientist who served as the Chief Data Scientist of the United States Office of Science and Technology Policy 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. His father, Suhas Patil, is a venture capitalist and the founder of Cirrus Logic.
Early life and education
Patil attended Kennedy Middle School, Monta Vista High School and De Anza College, all in Cupertino, California. While at Kennedy, he participated in a student exchange program, visiting Toyokawa, 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 from Earl Warren College at University of California, San Diego. He received a PhD 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, he used open datasets published by NOAA to improve numerical weather forecasting.
Career
Patil has held positions at LinkedIn, Greylock Partners, Skype, PayPal, and eBay.
2004
In 2004, Patil worked in the Advanced Systems and Concepts Office in the Department of Defense. 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 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.