David Olsen

Background

About David Olsen

I am a full stack (a.k.a. holistic or horizontal) data scientist and infrastructure engineer—two descriptors that can be unwieldy and nebulous to define given the range of duties typically done by these roles. In a nutshell, my job is to: design, create, automate, and maintain the systems, databases, and protocols needed to acquire data from disparate sources; extract, transform, and load that data for consumption in other systems or analytical frameworks; conduct analyses and develop tools to interrogate data; and in collaboration with my colleagues, share our findings through publication and presentation. Ultimately, my role; a dual of scientist and engineer; is to be the person who relentlessly pursues intractable data and computational problems until a reasonable solution is found. In my day-to-day, I solve these problems by marshaling a broad base of technical expertise and tools over infrastructure and database engineering, high-performance computing, and software development. Equally important to the technical implementation, I help pursue the questions underpinning these projects by utilizing an extensive array of analytic modalities; e.g, EDA, uncertainty modeling, time series analysis, discrete mathematics, machine learning, algorithm design, and GIS/spatial processing; to discover, access, and distill meaning from the data. With respect to my overall career, I derive tremendous pleasure from the path I've chosen to follow—even if non-traditional at times. Being part of an R1 institution means the problems I work on tend to be novel and require the continuous extension of my knowledge and skillsets in informatics, mathematics, and science. I continue to enjoy the challenge of data at scale and relish the fact discovered features in the data are a kernel upon which to expand the frontiers of human knowledge. Yet, while my career has been fulfilling to my intellectual curiosities, what has most inspired me is working with the people whom I've had the honor of calling colleagues. Not only the humility it fosters by working with the best-of-the-best, but the reward of knowing that what I do helps move a colleague's research forward and, by extension, contributes towards the greater good. Unicorns may not exist in the wild, nor would I presume to call myself one. However, my blend of scientific curiosity, technical ability, and business acumen does make me a strong data scientist in or outside the lab. If you would like to discuss how we can work together and learn from your data, don't hesitate to contact me at deolsen@deolsen.info.