Chief Scientist Sees the Direct Impact of His Work

Name: Leo Pekelis (he/him)

PhD: Statistics, Stanford University, 2016

What was your main area of research?

I studied topics in robust inference - statistical procedures that are difficult to misuse when implemented by users with diverse sets of biases, motivations and skill sets.

There were two procedures I explored in depth:

Correcting False Discovery Rates - used for analyzing many (1k+) experiments at once - for the case when the experiments themselves are not independent.
Online experimentation, or A/B Testing, where I developed simple sequential + multiple testing corrected procedures to better match the user model of a "tech company PM."

What is your current job?

I am currently the Chief Scientist at Gradient in San Mateo, California.

I set the research strategy for our applied science team, pursue high leverage research projects to scout ahead of our product team by 6mo-1yr, develop prototypes, and work on solutions directly for customers when appropriate.

At a small startup, I like having high autonomy to decide what I should do every day to be the most useful for our company's success and seeing the direct impact of my work.

How did you find this position? What were the career steps you took to get to where you are now?

I knew the founders of my current company from a previous startup I worked at - Opendoor.

PhD graduate ➡️ Statistician/Data Scientist ➡️ Head of Data Science / Data ➡️ Chief Scientist

Why did you decide to not pursue a career in academia?

While I enjoyed my time in my PhD, I ultimately felt more excited by building products to help improve our society.

In our PhD, we were taught how to harness the explosion of available data into valuable insights and I wanted to democratize that ability. Given how much demand there was/is for data driven applications, the more difficult decision was to not get swept out of academia too early.

What advice do you have for someone getting their PhD and looking to pursue a career outside of academia?

Take more time than you expect to choose your first steps after your PhD and how they may align with the career trajectory you want for yourself. You'll probably have less time for free and independent thinking in the future than you do right now.
Don't turn away potential connections, and don't be shy to reach out to people that inspire you. All of my most exciting career moves have been due to giving social opportunities the breathing room to happen.
When I interview recent PhD grads, I look for evidence of technical/practical ability that shows me the candidate will produce work that's relevant for the business. Internships/work experience/bootcamps/github projects/etc. all demonstrate experience with taking ideas and driving them to a working application.

Not having this mindset is the biggest risk I see in hiring recent PhDs & academics.