The greatest challenge of the Big Data revolution is making sense of all that information. It’s well enough for a company to collect every slice of data it can reach, but how do they extract value from what they hold? Data scientists fill the role of curator and traffic cop, selecting what data is useful and guiding the flow of data so the right people get the info they need when they need it. However, since Big Data is a relatively new thing, there aren’t many people with the skills to do the data scientist’s job.

To learn about this new career in the tech field, Dave Vellante and Paul Gillin, cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, spoke with Mike Tamir, chief science officer and executive VP of data science and education at Galvanize, Inc., during IBM Insight 2015.

A place of learning

The conversation started with a look at data science and why Tamir came to Galvanize. He said there was a huge demand for data scientists, but there were few people with the right skills. Tamir explained that he joined up with Galvanize to train the kind of data professional he was looking for during his time in the industry.

Galvanize, Tamir said, was a sort of learning hospital for data science. Member companies would come and do their work on-site with the students. The approach, he continued, was all about being close to the industry and working on real-life data sets and problems.

Sharpening the skills

The discussion then turned toward the question of the skills necessary for the data science field. Tamir described how there are different sorts of data science professionals. Data engineering, for example, requires a separate skill set from data modeling. He said that Galvanize had created training tracks to match the various professions.

Tamir then pointed out the trick was to use backwards planning, figuring out what sort of person a company might want to hire and then building the course backward from the end product. Galvanize designed the curriculum to match the tasks that a data professional would need to do, as well as the standards they would need to reach.

Watch the full video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of IBM Insight 2015. And join in on the conversation by CrowdChatting with theCUBE hosts.

Photo by SiliconANGLE