This post is based on an interview with Brian Dolan. It is part of our series of interviews of OODA Network members. Our objective with these interviews is to provide actionable information of interest to the community, including insights that can help with your own career progression. We also really like highlighting some of the great people that make our continued research and reporting possible.  For the full series see: OODA Expert Network Bio Series.

Career Progression:   Back in Seventh Grade, Brian and a few buddies met at the Library and taught themselves how to program. This was in the early 1980’s when instantaneous global reach was very new and exciting.

After graduation, he got a job at a Construction Company.  They were interested in stress tests and soil samples. He created a program that would do a time-series analysis using a Lotus Notes spreadsheet.  He used math to determine how much soil would need to be removed and what grade of slope would be required for the project.  His company wanted him to get certified so he could take on the upcoming J. contract as project supervisor.  He took the test without studying and missed it by one point.  His field knowledge was almost enough.  He sent away for the study materials so he could retake the test.

At the same time, Brian had subscribed to a “Scientific Book of the Month Club”.  Back then, getting an envelope in the mail with a book each month on a different scientific topic was quite exciting.  Every time he sat down to review his City Test material, he would look longingly at his Science books, which were always MUCH more interesting.  Brian knew he needed to go back to school. At the age of 25, he quit his job, moved back in with Mom and went to Community College.  He continued to pursue Math and Science until he eventually obtained two Master’s Degrees.  Brian is emphatic: “You can’t succeed at something unless you really want to do it!”.

While in school, Brian learned the power of automation early on.  He got a side-job with Sebastian International as an analyst to evaluate their customer relationships through a telephonic system.  He wrote a program that automated his entire job, and then proceeded to spend his days kicking back playing Minesweeper.  This made a big impression on him!

“If you are interested in doing analytics, you can find the TYPE of work you are interested in and do analytics in that field.” he says.  Brian found a job in a Marine Lab doing environmental testing.   Each morning he went out to the Marine Preserve to collect samples, and then brought them back to the lab to “do math”.  Brian recalls that was the “best job of his life”, but after his wife got pregnant, he reluctantly conceded that he “needed a real job”.

Brian was hired by Yahoo as a Senior Analyst in the Business Intelligence Group. He worked with the business and marketing side to do economic forecasting based on click rates, conversions and revenue.  He was able to create a robust forecasting system that crossed many disciplines to help understand what type of ads were successful.  MySpace recruited him as the Director of Analytics for performance marketing – the hardest part of online advertising.

“Branded marketing is easy to do.” Brian says.  “You do a takeover and push out creative ads.  Remnant advertising is much more difficult.  You only get paid when they click on an ad to buy a product. Accurate Attribution models are essential to everyone’s success.  It is mathematically complicated chaos, and I like chaos! If you are clever enough with it, you can find a way to satisfy everyone’s interests.”

In 2009, Brian started Discovix, Inc., a company designed to leverage the natural language processes from MySpace.  He was quickly approached by the Intelligence Agencies, and many of his solutions took off behind closed doors.   Brian quickly became a leading expert in Artificial Intelligence pertaining to text, winning competitions and producing rapid topic modeling and text summarization techniques to tackle huge amounts of previously undigestible data.

Brian founded Deep 6 AI in 2013 to pour through the reams of Medical Patient Records that were hoarding vast amounts of important information.  From this, they were able to connect patients to the appropriate clinical trials in a way never before possible.  “This was very gratifying work!” Brian recalls.  “After the ‘building’ part was over, however, it was all about growth.  That’s boring!”  He missed the excitement that goes along with creating new capabilities.  He sold his share of the company five years later and started Verdant AI.

Brian is super excited about Verdant AI.  “It’s a “start-up studio!  We generate companies as a product.  We help them invent the AI/Advanced Analytics technology, test it, find users, get an executive team, and get financial resources.    We work closely with as many enterprises as possible to help connect solutions to capabilities.   One example:  CoreLogic possessed reams of Tax Data.  They had a massive ETL Extract Transform and Load problem.  When they were trying to move from one platform to another, they were plagued with migration issues.  We developed a solution and built a company to do it!”

Like many successful mathematicians, Brian is also an accomplished musician.  He played the flute when he was younger in some pretty successful bands.  Today, he contents himself with playing Irish Banjo in an Irish Music band.

Surprises: “I have always found it distressing how much people change when there is money in the room.  In the beginning, we are all idealists (in math, music, etc.).  It’s fun just hanging around and inventing things.  But once you throw a million dollars on the table, everyone’s tone changes.  I have always sought to adapt to this without becoming one of those people.”   Brian says.

Technologies:  Brian is closely following the advances of graph-based analytics in high performance computing.  Making high performance computing available to more people will enable people to understand their data and their results better.   “Graph analytics is connected data – it tells a better story.” Brian says.

Advice for Decision Makers: “Don’t believe the hype.” Brian cautions.    “Every technology gets more attention than it deserves.  If your interest is to innovate, think through your entire problem and then make a decision on the technologies.”

Additionally, Brian emphasizes how important it is to forge a creative team.  “Hire Characters, not Character!  I look for people who are undervalued; they are trying to prove themselves.  The type of creative hard worker I need is the one who enjoys nibbling away at a problem until they solve it!”

Views on Thought Leaders: “I follow Dan Faggella at Emerj Artificial Intelligence Research (https://www.linkedin.com/in/danfaggella/).   He’s doing great things to ‘de-hype’ the AI landscape and bring things into focus!   Also, I think Bill Schmarzo has developed a lot of frameworks for Big Data and AI Applications that are useful. https://www.linkedin.com/in/schmarzo/”.Brian says.

Quick Hits:

• Book Recommendation: The Analysis of Integrated and CoIntegrated Time Series with R, by Bernard Pfaff 
• Favorite piece of content on OODAloop: Brian uses OODA to keep on top of new technologies.  You normally think of positive uses of data, but a reminder like this is crucial: https://oodaloop.com/briefs/2019/10/31/2020-is-the-year-data-gets-weaponized/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/buddha314/