{"id":20657,"date":"2017-08-31T08:59:20","date_gmt":"2017-08-31T12:59:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/company\/stories\/childs-sudden-death-leads-data-scientists-quest-answers\/"},"modified":"2022-03-04T23:12:40","modified_gmt":"2022-03-05T04:12:40","slug":"childs-sudden-death-leads-data-scientists-quest-answers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/company\/stories\/childs-sudden-death-leads-data-scientists-quest-answers\/","title":{"rendered":"A child\u2019s sudden death leads data scientists on a quest for answers"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Last year John Kahan<\/a> decided he wanted to climb Mount Kilimanjaro<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It was an uncharacteristic decision for Kahan, a native New Yorker who says his usual idea of roughing it is \u201cstaying at a Courtyard by Marriott,\u201d but it hearkened back to the saddest day of his life.<\/p>\n

The timing corresponded with what would have been the 13th birthday of his son Aaron Matthew, who had died hours after birth of what\u2019s become known as SIDS, or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Medically speaking, there was no explanation for his death, even after an autopsy.<\/p>\n

Lacking an explanation, Kahan, the General Manager for Customer Data and Analytics at Microsoft, did \u201cwhat most human beings do in these circumstances.\u201d He tried to find some answers, and donated (and matched) funds to SIDS related charities<\/a> at Seattle Children\u2019s Hospital where Aaron was born.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n

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But then, as the day that would have been Aaron\u2019s 13th birthday \u2014 an important one in his Jewish faith \u2014 approached, \u201cSomething kind of snapped in my head,\u201d Kahan said. He set out to raise $13,000 for SIDS research by climbing Africa\u2019s highest and most famous mountain. He reached the peak on June 29, 2016<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When he returned, the team of data scientists who work for Kahan at Microsoft had a surprise for him that would prove to have much more impact on SIDS research than the money and awareness Kahan had generated on his own.<\/p>\n

While he was away, they\u2019d been using Microsoft\u2019s analytics and cloud computing resources \u2014 tools like Power BI<\/a> and the Azure cloud computing platform<\/a> \u2014 to examine data on births and infant deaths collected by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe CDC has this huge data set that\u2019s been gathered over the last 15 years. This is the great news. The challenge is that this is more geared to Big Data skills and not traditional researchers. Thus, it wasn\u2019t being used to its fullest. There was also additional data from six hundred families that another parent put together that wasn\u2019t be used at all,\u201d Kahan said.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n

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The effort was led by Juan Miguel Lavista<\/a>, a principal data scientist who works for Kahan. \u201cWe wanted to find a way to give back that involved more than just donating money. When we found this data, we realized that analysis of it would be similar to the types of problems we work on every day. It\u2019s data science,\u201d Lavista said. But there was another reason: At the time he started working for Kahan in 2013, Lavista was also the father of a week-old baby girl. The story of Kahan\u2019s loss thirteen years earlier resonated powerfully with him.<\/p>\n

The team of 20 data scientists started meeting with doctors and researchers at Seattle Children\u2019s Hospital<\/a>,<\/u> including Dr. Daniel Rubens<\/a> and Nino Ramirez Ph.D.<\/a>, , to explain their effort and some of their findings. The SIDS researchers\u2019 reactions were immediate.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst, we had independently found correlations in the data that were already known,\u201d Lavista said. That demonstrated they were investigating something meaningful. \u201cThen, we had found some correlations in the CDC data that they didn\u2019t know about, and they got very interested.\u201d<\/p>\n

In June, Kahan\u2019s team donated this powerful set of tools to Seattle Children\u2019s. Researchers there may now visually explore existing data on SIDS to find new insights and develop new hypotheses about what causes it. Microsoft Philanthropies<\/a> donated Azure cloud services to power the tools, and as a result, aid medical research. And because Microsoft\u2019s employee giving program<\/a> pays nonprofits for each hour an employee volunteers (up to $15,000 a year), Kahan\u2019s team generated over $11,000 while working on the project.\u00a0All told, Kahan has helped raise $250,000 for SIDS research so far.<\/p>\n

Kahan and Lavista will be delivering the opening keynote at the 2017 Data for Good Exchange<\/u><\/a> on Sunday, September 24th<\/sup>, about their team’s efforts and breakthroughs in research that have resulted from using publicly available data to try solving the mysteries of SIDS and the broader category of Sudden Unexpected Infant Death (SUID).<\/em><\/h3>\n

Kahan told us that data scientists have an important role to play in using their skills to help increase understanding of the world\u2019s problems. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t have to be about this problem in particular. Choose your area. Partnerships in these spaces are needed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n

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Register now<\/em><\/a> for the 2017 Data for Good Exchange. We encourage you to invite colleagues who may wish to attend.<\/em><\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last year John Kahan decided he wanted to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. It was an uncharacteristic decision for Kahan, a native New Yorker who says his usual idea of roughing it is \u201cstaying at a Courtyard by Marriott,\u201d but it hearkened back to the saddest day of his life. The timing corresponded with what would have [...]","protected":false},"author":313,"featured_media":19649,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1466],"tags":[1475,1577,1786,1572,1418,1676,1779,1472],"class_list":["post-20657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-at-bloomberg","tag-d4gx","tag-big-data","tag-chief-technology-officer","tag-cto","tag-data","tag-data-analysis","tag-data-for-good-exchange","tag-data-science"],"yoast_head":"\nA child\u2019s sudden death leads data scientists on a quest for answers | Bloomberg LP<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/company\/stories\/childs-sudden-death-leads-data-scientists-quest-answers\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" 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