Impact Report 2016

Data Scientists Shape the Future

Strategically aligning ourselves as an industry leader in data science and analytics has provided Booz Allen opportunities to work on some of the toughest challenges facing the nation and its industries today. This has helped us attract accomplished data scientists to the firm—including some of the most renowned in the field. Our people, our solutions, and our passion for advancing the art of data science continues to differentiate us from our competition.

“Booz Allen has deeper data science and analytics, cyber, and cloud capabilities than anyone in the industry,” says one of those experts, Senior Vice President Xena Ugrinsky, who joined the firm in 2015, and who says this is the reason she came to Booz Allen. “We’ve done it for longer than anyone, and we’re able to deliver it on a scale that most companies could never approximate. You need someone to crunch data? We’ve crunched data for the International Space Station. You need someone to do logistics analytics? We helped move the U.S. military. Now we’re applying that expertise to help our commercial clients outpace their competition and offering our data scientists the opportunity to tackle the most complex problems in government and industry.”

The Vision and Tools to Attract the Best People

What makes Booz Allen stand out? According to Senior Vice President Mark Jacobsohn, it’s that “We ask questions of data that nobody else is asking. We transform the way our clients do their jobs, we advance the art and science of data science, and we help the planet—even save lives. Not everyone is willing to take those risks, and even fewer are equipped to do so. Together, our data scientists dare to take on new and meaningful challenges every day, and we reward and advance our talented and committed team for both results and technical expertise.”

In addition to our efforts to make Booz Allen attractive to accomplished data science professionals, the firm works with several academic institutions to create curriculums that help build the specific skills we’re looking for in future job candidates. We’re also building our expertise from the inside with the launch of Explore Data Science—a self-paced, interactive, web-based course that uses gamification to teach our data scientists and other technical professionals how to navigate their way through raw data by applying mathematical concepts to real challenges. We offer this course to clients as well so they can train their own employees.

Reinforcing Our Position as Market Leader

We have the best people, and those people are passionate about helping organizations of all types and missions make use of data as a resource. This was demonstrated in 2014, when Booz Allen released The Field Guide to Data Science, a foundational document now widely regarded throughout government and industry as the definitive guide to the discipline. The firm launched an expanded and updated second edition of The Field Guide in December 2015 with new features and content that reflect Booz Allen's evolving, most up-to-date understanding of cutting-edge analytics techniques, such as deep machine learning. One firm-created data science and analytics solutions—Polaris™ —is also helping underscore Booz Allen’s position as a leader in the industry. Polaris allows a project management team to work collaboratively—in one environment and in real time—to predict and mitigate cost and schedule risk, and to ensure better project performance.

Finally, Booz Allen acquired Epidemico in the fall of 2014—a Boston-based informatics startup known for data acquisition and analytics. Their employees demonstrated an equal passion for providing early real-time insights, continuous monitoring, and consumer engagement for disease outbreaks, drug safety, supply chain vulnerabilities, and other areas related to public health. The acquisition underscores the firm’s commitment to further develop leading-edge analytics in critical areas such as population health and substantiates our regional influence in the world’s data science hub.

Today, Booz Allen’s 600-person-strong elite data science team is continuing to grow and bring cross-discipline expertise and capabilities to internal and external clients, keeping them competitive in today’s data-driven economy.

“We ask questions of data that nobody else is asking. We transform the way our clients do their jobs, we advance the art and science of data science, and we help the planet—even save lives. Not everyone is willing to take those risks, and even fewer are equipped to do so. –Senior Vice President Mark Jacobsohn”

Booz Allen employees Eric Don, Travis Motley, and Sarahzin Chowdhury show their passion for applying data science for social good during the 2016 Data Science Bowl.

In the U.S. alone, one person is diagnosed with heart disease every 43 seconds. And when you’re waiting for the doctor to return with your results—to learn if you’re one of them—it can feel like an eternity. Now it’s possible for patients to receive their prognoses in real time, thanks to a cutting-edge medical advancement achieved just this year—by two hedge fund analysts with no medical experience.

Watch: Data Scientists talk about the first-ever National Data Science Bowl, sponsored by Booz Allen and Kaggle.

This breakthrough was achieved thanks to the 2016 Data Science Bowl, cosponsored Booz Allen and Kaggle, in partnership with the National Institutes of Health’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. This critical advancement speaks to the power of data science, and our sponsorship of the Data Science Bowl represents just one of the many ways in the last 4+ years that Booz Allen has been strategically reinforcing its position as an industry leader in the field of data science. We are growing our data science workforce, bringing what we’ve done for decades for our government and military clients to help other companies take advantage of these critical capabilities.

“People want to work for companies that give them an outlet to make an impact,” says Principal Steve Mills. “You can get so much more lift from your CSR investments if you give people tangible ways to participate, and we can also attract a lot of skilled talent to the company through these initiatives.”

Download the full PDF of the 2016 Impact Report.

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