Patil has held positions at
LinkedIn,
Greylock Partners,
Skype,
PayPal, and
eBay.
2004 In 2004, Patil worked in the Advanced Systems and Concepts Office in the
Department of Defense. He served as the project leader for the Threat Anticipation Project. His role was to anticipate threats connected to and surrounding terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and failed states (with an emphasis on human rights violations), employing
social network analysis to help anticipate these threats. who were to use data to detect signalled noise, a concern which grew following the 9/11 attacks.
2011 While a data-scientist-in-residence at Greylock Partners, Patil produced
Building Data Science Teams. The book provides advice and strategies on creating data science teams in business and technology. It was published by O'Reilly Media.
2012 Patil wrote
Data Jujitsu--The art of turning data into product, also while a data-scientist-in-residence at Greylock Partners. The book gives instructions as to solving data science problems and whether they are "worth solving" at all. It was also published by O'Reilly Media.
2015–2017 On February 18, 2015, the White House announced Patil would be the first U.S. Chief Data Scientist (Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Data Policy and Chief Data Scientist). In addresses to the public, Patil explained: "The mission of the U.S. Chief Data Scientist, simply put, is to responsibly unleash the power of data to benefit all Americans." He added that his team's priority was to do so by creating data. In a memorandum on February 20, 2015, entitled “Unleashing the Power of Data to Serve the American People”, Patil outlined his goals as Chief Data Scientist: • Providing vision on how to provide a maximum social return on federal data. • Creating nationwide data policies that enable shared services and forward-leaning practices to advance our nation's leadership in the data age. • Working with agencies to establish best practices for data management and ensure the long-term sustainability of databases. • Recruiting and retaining the best minds in data science for public service to address these data science objectives and act as conduits among the government, academia, and industry. In his tenure, Patil helped launch the White House's Police Data Initiative as well as the White House's Data-Driven Justice Initiative, collecting data on police activities, and worked on the
Precision Medicine Initiative, aiming to build the largest database on genetic information.
Law Enforcement In 2015, President Obama initiated The
President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing in response to the Ferguson shootings in 2014. Included were the Police Data Initiative and the Data-Driven Justice Initiative. Open data was also thought to increase accountability within the police. The initiative had gathered 126 jurisdictions across the country. The information would enable investigation into patterns of injustice as well as the ability to see if systems in place were wanted or working. Police departments struggled to release their data, primarily because it was not “collected well”, as Patil had mentioned in an interview. Disorganized datasets had prevented accurate assessments. Patil proposed that this was due to the absence of a dedicated technician whose purpose is to organize the data. Efforts were taken to improve coding abilities of police superintendents and homogenizing organization across the 18,000 jurisdictions on board.
Data-Driven Justice Initiative With open police data, Patil saw that data helped track law enforcement actions’ disproportionate interactions with minorities, the poor and those with mental health concerns. In a memorandum to the American people, Patil said, “if all the data from law enforcement were effectively captured, analyzed, and shared, imagine how the effective and analysis of data could advance proven reforms, increase efficiency, and prevent injustice.”. At its start in 2015, more than 91 million people are covered by the DDJ. The initiative was started as there is not a current dataset in which analyses and correlations can be made across gender and ethnic diversities. This would help with curing diseases but also understand the health of the general population. Patil had often stated that it would be helpful because one may very well be able to see what diseases are not actually rare, but very common. A key issue in PMI that Patil worked on was of trust. Concerned with maintaining these principles grew for the future as Patil addressed concerns about the effect of American Healthcare Act (
AHCA) on contributions to PMI. He feared that, with the AHCA, people will be scared to donate their genomic information because it will expose pre-existing conditions. While there are protections in place to secure data privacy such as the
Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) instilled in 2008, Patil expressed a worry that the Act would not be heeded.
2017–present Patil was a member of the
National Infrastructure Advisory Council before resigning in August 2017. In October 2017, it was reported that Patil had joined the executive team of Devoted Health. He is currently the Head of Technology. On November 14, 2017, Patil announced that he was joining the American venture capital firm
Venrock as an adviser. In February 2023, Patil became a general partner at
GreatPoint Ventures. ==References==