Discovery Analytics Center adds Peter Hauck to lead software development team
The Virginia Tech Discovery Analytics Center has added Peter Hauck to join its Early Model-Based Event Detection using Surrogates project, also known as EMBERS.
Hauck will lead the software development team as a data scientist, specializing in the integration of research into production.
A graduate of Cornell University, Hauck has worked at Google as a quantitative analyst and was also co-founder and chief data scientist at AdTonik Inc., where he worked with modeling predictive software.
Hauck will augment Ph.D. students’ technical competencies while implementing industry-efficient coding practices.
"This project is a joint effort between talented people, combining cutting-edge data sources and producing a very new and exciting type of analytics,” Hauck said. “I am proud to be a part of the even bigger and better things to come.”
The Early Model-Based Event Detection using Surrogates project receives support from the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity program of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The goal is to develop an automated system that continuously ingests and mines massive volumes of open-source data, including tweets, Facebook pages, news articles, blog posts, Google search volume, Wikipedia, meteorological data, economic and financial indicators, coded event data, online restaurant reservations (OpenTable), and aerial satellite imagery.
The system generates alerts automatically of events related to illness, disease spread, political crises and elections. It is currently focused on countries in Latin America.
The Discovery Analytics Center comprises faculty and students from various disciplines, including computer science, electrical and computer engineering, statistics, and mathematics.
With operations in Blacksburg and at the Virginia Tech Research Center -- Arlington, the Discovery Analytics Center is administratively housed in the Department of Computer Science of the College of Engineering and receives support from the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science.
Written by Emily Kathleen Alberts
