In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Rashmi Mohan hosts Eugenio Zuccarelli, Data Science Manager at CVS Health, where he leads innovation efforts for complex chronic care. He’s a business-focused data science leader who has worked for other Fortune 500 companies across several industries, including healthcare analytics, automotive, financial, and fintech. He has also worked in the COVID-19 Policy Alliance task force using analytics to fight COVID-19 and develop policy recommendations for The White House and finding solutions to fight the pandemic. In addition to scientific journals, his work has been featured in Forbes, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, and Financial Times and his recognitions include Forbes 30 Under 30, Fortune 40 Under 40, and being a TEDx Speaker.

Eugenio discusses how early passions in engineering, technology, and robotics led him to work in AI and data science, and a lack of the human component in these fields has driven his work. He describes his work on MIT Media Lab’s Project US, which uses AI and advanced biosignal processing to help people become more effective and empathetic leaders and organizations make tangible progress towards their HR goals, and how that research shifted when COVID hit and people worked from home. Eugenio and Rashmi also touch on the common challenges and concerns across different industries, such as data sharing and privacy, and his views on synthetic data. He also shares some of the most important lessons learned in his career and offers advice for students looking to build solutions with machine learning.