A Conversation with James Sokolowski – Ph.D., Principal Consultant – Analytics Solutions at Tessella
Jim currently directs Tessella’s analytics solutions, manages the company’s operations in Houston, and acts as technical lead for Tessella’s most complex and strategically important analytics projects. Jim has produced patentable intellectual property across multiple domains supporting military, intelligence, other federal, state, and local government, as well as an incredible diversity of commercial customer segments. Jim’s unique skill set enables him to produce the most cost-effective solutions in new and challenging environments where out-of-the-box problem solving is essential.
BRW: What do you hope the audience will learn from this webinar?
The key takeaways are that AI is in fact complex, without any easy answers, but this doesn’t imply that successful AI implementations are impossible or even cost ineffective to develop. AI success requires respecting the complexity, watching for all possible failure modes, and using sound development techniques. We will cover these topics in detail.
BRW: What discussions do you look forward to having with the audience?
My favorite discussions center around two main points. First, ‘what can I learn from other industries’ and the second revolves around fundamental and conceptual aspects of AI, machine learning, and analytics in general. Both these approaches show folks are considering the basics, which is the best and most important starting point.
BRW: What do you enjoy most about your role?
I absolutely love listening to folks discuss their business problems. The opportunity to absorb inputs, and synthesize a bigger-picture solution to extremely complex problems always starts with the underlying business issues and motivations.
BRW: How did you get into the industry?
With my training as a physicist, astronomer, and astrophysicist, working with the craziest data has been part of my work. This also led to a focus on what I call the ‘capabilities and limitations’ of data, so that one can hope to craft an optimal data processing and analytics chain to extract critical business information. I started my own consulting company more than twenty years ago and learned AI & ML as these tools became available and necessary for my work, and now with Tessella the breadth and sophistication of the challenges just continues to grow.
BRW: Where is your favourite place in the world and why?
I absolutely love everything about Texas. The people are warm, friendly, self-reliant, and very much common sense. The ecosystems offer everything from mountains and deserts to pine forests and year-round warm weather. In Houston, I can be active year-round windsurfing, kiteboarding, and competing at disk golf so that helps me stay healthy and engaged.
Join James Sokolowski on a webinar entitled Delivering Business Value from Machine Learning and Analytics by Tesella on 27th Februuary at 3PM London/10AM New York.