Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Edward Raff. Edward a Chief Scientist at Booz Allen Hamilton where he leads their Machine Learning research group. He’s also a Visiting Professor at UMBC where he works closely with the DREAM and IRAL labs, and teaches courses in the Data Science department. He received his PhD in Computer Science from University of Maryland, Baltimore County (2018) while working full time. Edward is the author of the JSAT which is a java based machine learning library, and is interested in applying machine learning to malware, fairness, and biometrics. He has also written the book “inside deep learning” where he focuses on finding the perfect balance between math and implementation of deep learning algorithms. In this episode we learn about how Edward’s career in machine learning was kicked off by a happy accident while studying abroad, how machine learning is being applied to malware detection, and how a data career contracting for the government may be different than one working for a private company. I hope you enjoy!