A broad term for large and complex sets of information, BiG Data has become a serious business. Governments, big corporations, industries, universities etc., use big data analytics to spot business trends, stop diseases, predict weather, combat crime, and zero in on terrorist module.
Recently US President Obama’s administration took a big step in naming Indian -American Dhanurjay (“DJ”) Patil as its first Chief Data Scientist and Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Data Policy. The appointment marked yet another top sci-tech job in the U.S government that has gone to a person of Indian-origin: Obama appointed Aneesh Chopra as the US government’s first chief technology officer in 2009, when he also named Vivek Kundra as the Chief Information Office (CIO). Another Indian-American, Arati Prabhakar, who also headed the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) earlier, is now the director of DARPA, the US government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency that develops military technology (computer networking and hypertext among other internet-related things were developed by DARPA as part of the US defense program).
DJ himself wrote a White House blog shortly after his appointment pointing to the transformative uses of data being just around the corner: from precision medicine and other forms of smarter health care delivery to individualized education, to the ”Internet of Things” (which refers to devices like cars or thermostats communicating with each other using embedded sensors linked through wired and wireless networks). And leading the Data Darbar in what is expected to be a Data Raj in times to comes – DJ Patil.
