Mike Freenor

Senior Data Scientist, Distil Networks

Washington, D.C.

A Raleigh native, I graduated from N.C. State University in 2005 with a BS in computer science. From there, I took a sojourn through various philosophy and logic programs (receiving an M.S. from CMU's Department of Philosophy, currently A.B.D.) which put me directly in contact with inductive logic, statistics, and machine learning. I left CMU in 2013 to join Distil's team as their first (and currently senior) data scientist. The leap from doing blackboard mathematics and proofs back to coding, fire-drills, and harsh deadlines (especially in a Hadoop ecosystem) was a jarring though incredibly enriching one. Today I'm glad to say that I am involved with Distil in developing cutting edge bot detection using machine learning and behavioral modeling. I have always enjoyed applied math and statistics, but I have to say that in dealing with Distil's large data set, I have found a real aesthetic appreciation for working with big data specifically; not just the sheer volume of what's being accomplished, but the small volume of people who are capable of doing it at all.