posted on 2020-06-23, 22:27authored byRichard Dean
The ability to influence decision making by extracting knowledge from data is key to success
in organisations across New Zealand. However, high demand for data scientists means that
many organisations who want to expand their data analytics capability experience
difficulties in recruiting suitably skilled candidates. Richard will present an alternative
approach focussed on the upskilling, retraining and empowering of existing employees
through what is termed a ‘data science accelerator’. He will discuss his experience as Public
Health England’s first graduate from the UK government’s data science accelerator
programme, how that led to working on some cool projects in the UK and why he’s now just
as fired up to bring the concept over to New Zealand. He will provide some insights from
how the data science initiative is settling in at ESR and how New Zealand could become
more ‘united in data’.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Richard is a Data Scientist at ESR, a crown research institute that deals with nitty gritty real
world problems affecting human communities covering everything from forensic science to
human health, biowaste, microplastics and the environment. Before joining ESR, he worked
as a Senior Data Scientist for Public Health England, an executive agency of the UK’s
Department of Health.
In his current role, he works across the whole organisation on projects that gain insight from
big data sets. He is also responsible for driving forward ESR’s data science initiative which
involves training staff through data carpentries and pushing the boundaries through an
engineering, robotics, innovation, coding and automation club – Erica for short.
Richard was the first member of staff from PHE to graduate from the UK government digital
service ‘data science accelerator’ programme. In 2019, he brought the scheme to New
Zealand through an internal accelerator programme within ESR. A second cohort is currently
being planned and will run from February – May 2020. He has a BSc in Information Systems Management from Durham University and wrote an
MSc thesis on public health data interoperability standards while working in Durham.
He moved to New Zealand in November 2017 with his Kiwi wife and is trying his best to raise
two crazy kids – one born in the UK and one born in NZ.
Richard’s claim to fame is that he is one of New Zealand’s most successful mini golf coaches,
having convinced his wife to travel to Kosovo for the 2016 World Adventure Golf Masters,
where she won a bronze medal - New Zealand’s first ever medal in international match play.