Leaning in This week, we hosted over 35 of the top PhD candidates in the US at our Facebook Menlo Park campus for a Women in Research Lean In event. As part of the event, I joined 5 of my colleagues for a “Women in Research” panel to share some of my experiences and insights working in technology, and am sharing those more broadly here.
I am a Data Scientist on the Facebook Core Data Science team working on understanding the connection between people’s online and offline identities. The goal of my research is to help inform product teams how to deliver more personal and valuable experiences to people. Experiences that build meaningful connections with the people and places they interact with around the world. And, I get to work on really amazing things.
As a Data Scientist, I have the opportunity to apply my expertise across a range of Facebook products. Here are some examples of my work:
Understanding barriers to Internet access in low coverage areas My interest and expertise in spatial data analysis led to a collaboration with the Internet.org team on a project where I inferred the coverage and quality of existing Internet connectivity in low-bandwidth areas. The goal of the work was to better understand some key barriers to Internet access, and help the team devise and adapt new technical solutions to people get online.
Connecting in times of crisis It is incredibly gratifying to see the importance that Facebook Apps play in bringing people together around the world, and sometimes in very trying situations. After an earthquake occurred in Napa, CA, I noticed and wroteabout how people in the affected area had significantly increased their use of the platform to communicate with friends and share updates. This is consistent with what we have seen in other times of crisis, where connecting is more important than ever.
As social media has evolved, people have turned to it as an efficient way to deliver one-to-many communications. This makes a platform like Facebook a natural place to share updates in times of crisis. At the time of the Napa earthquake, a team was already building the Facebook Safety Check, and after reviewing our findings, we were able to quickly transfer the analysis insights into the design of the feature.
During the refugee crisis last year, we saw an increased number of people show their support on Facebook. We developed a machine learning algorithm to classify pages and groups as being supportive of the Syrian refugee crisis and were able to show that nearly 8 million people around the world used more than 35,000 Facebook Groups and Pages to support the Syrian refugees. We also found that four out of five people on Facebook are connected to someone directly affected by the Syrian refugee crisis through a friend of a friend. This demonstrates the impact of connecting in a global world. This research was featured in the “You’re not alone” video from Mercy Corps, International Rescue Committee.
A Data Scientist’s toolset As a Data Scientist, I frame each project using data exploration and visualization techniques. This also helps me set the goals for the project to keep it focused.
