Are our Academic institutions doing enough to prepare today's PhDs with the skills needed for the current career landscape? For the most part I believe the institutions are failing badly here and PhD graduates students are left on their own to navigate the career landscape. In this presentation I go over skills you can acquire while in graduate school to put you in better career footing.

1. DATA SCIENCE MEETS ACADEMIA
ANDI SHEHU, CEO OF BYTEFLOW DYNAMICS
JULY 7, 2017

2. BECOMING A 21ST CENTURY SCIENTIST:
Update your research methodologies to adapt to the new
technological landscape:
standardize the research process,
build databases to store research data,
leverage the power of open source tools,
practice business development, marketing and sales.

3. STANDARDIZE YOUR RESEARCH
Incorporate Data Science Cycle and be comfortable
explaining each step of your research:
state the hypothesis,
set actionable goals & timelines,
getting & cleaning data,
exploratory data analysis,
build the model,
test, tune, and validate,
deployment and communication.

4. DATABASES & CLOUD COMPUTING
Build a database to store your Lab’s data.
Host your database on .
Deploy algorithms on AWS.
Incorporate APIs into your research if possible.
Amazon Web Services

5. DATA AND ANALYTICS
Utilize open source tools for data analytics (R, Python).
Benefits of using open source tools:
reproducible research,
superior selection of algorithms,
easier to incorporate variety of data sources.
Incorporate different data sources into your research:
social media feeds: (Twitter, Facebook),
polling data (Pew, Gallup),
open data sources: , .Data Gov NYC Open Data

6. BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND MARKETING
Understand the research money flow which runs your Lab.
Comprehend and acknowledge what the expectations from
your lab’s research grant are.
Write research grant proposals (even small travel grants).
Design a product/service which commercializes your
research.
Practice elevator pitch: elaborate on usefulness of your
research skills?
Constantly update your CV and personal statement.
Network, good business opportunities come form those
who surround us.

7. MISCELLANEOUS
Use for version control.
Host your full projects on or .
Set up a project management tool for your lab to
project progress.
Use or as primary tool to write papers.
Gain basic web design and development skills by doing:
CSS, Html, JS. (Build a personal or Lab website)
Git
Github Bitbucket
manage
and track
LaTex R Markdown

8. BE A 21ST CENTURY (DATA) SCIENTIST