Kirk Borne

Kirk Borne is a data scientist and an astrophysicist currently working at the global technology and consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton since 2015. Kirk spent nearly 20 years supporting NASA projects, including NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope as a data archive project scientist, NASA’s Astronomy Data Center, and NASA’s Space Science Data Operations Office.

With more than 30 years of experience, he is also a recognized worldwide top influencer since 2013. In parallel to his main responsibilities, Kirk is also a global speaker, consultant, Big Data & Data Science advisor, TedX speaker, researcher, author and data literacy advocate.

Kirk Borne graduated in Physics from LSU and holds a PhD in Astronomy from Caltech in 1981. After that, he spent nearly 20 years supporting NASA projects, including NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope as Data Archive Project Scientist, NASA’s Astronomy Data Center, and NASA’s Space Science Data Operations Office. In 2003, he became a Professor of Astrophysics and Computational Science at the George Mason University (GMU) School of Physics, Astronomy, and Computational Sciences right until 2015. He served as an undergraduate advisor for the GMU Data Science program and a graduate advisor to students in the Computational Science and Informatics PhD program. 

He has extensive experience in large scientific databases and information systems, including expertise in scientific data mining. He was a contributor to the design and development of the new Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), for which he contributed in the areas of science data management, informatics and statistical science research, galaxies research, and education and public outreach. 

He is an elected Fellow of the International Astrostatistics Association for his lifelong contributions to big data research in astronomy. Since 2013, he has been listed consistently each year as a top worldwide influencer in Big Data and Data Science on social media. Dirk updates regularly his own blog Rocket Data Science.
 

In a recent interview, Borne listed the topics he is most passionate about: "Data literacy. Data science for all. Machine learning. Internet of things. The Experience Economy. Modelling and simulation of complex systems."