School of Information 2019 Winter Commencement
The commencement ceremony honors the class of 2018 with keynote speaker Amit Bhattacharyya and student speaker.
The winter ceremony honors School of Information graduates from the summer and fall 2018 semesters.
Outstanding MIDS projects will be honored with the Hal R. Varian MIDS Capstone Award
Reception immediately following the ceremony.
Keynote Speaker: Amit Bhattacharyya
Amit Bhattacharyya is the Head of Data Science at Vox Media, a modern media company focused on connecting with passionate and curious audiences. Amit works across all of Vox’s web properties in developing models to better understand audiences as well as working to deliver innovative product solutions such as personalization and recommendations to the platform.
Previously, he has led data science initiatives at both an education technology startup and an advertising agency. He started his career working as a quantitative analyst at various banks and hedge funds in New York City for 12 years.
Amit has been teaching in the MIDS program since 2016. He has enjoyed teaching courses diverse as introductory Python, data storage, and machine learning most recently. He particularly enjoys bringing real-world examples from his work into the classroom.
He received a Ph.D. in physics from Indiana University. He is a UC Berkeley alumnus, having majored in astrophysics and classics and a proud and long-suffering Cal football fan. Teaching has always been a passion of his and having a strong connection to his alma mater has been a dream come true.
In his spare time, he rides his road bike year-round, goes skiing at the first sign of powder, and dabbles with machine learning algorithms for fantasy football. He lives in New Rochelle, NY, with his wife and two teenage daughters, both of who have been known to occasionally show up for a MIDS class or two.
