Valentine Fontama

Valentine Fontama is a Principal Data Scientist Manager in the Cloud & Enterprise Analytics and Insights team that delivers analytics capabilities across Azure and C+E cloud services. He brings over nine years of Data Science experience: Following a PhD in Neural Networks, he was a New Technology Consultant at Equifax in London where he pioneered the use of Data Mining to improve Risk Assessment and Marketing in the Consumer Credit industry. His last role was Principal Data Scientist in Data & Decision Sciences Group (DDSG) where he led consulting to external customers.He also has 7 years of business experience: in prior roles at Microsoft Val was a Senior Product Manager for Big Data and Predictive Analytics in Cloud and Enterprise Marketing. He led product management for Azure Machine Learning; HDInsight; Parallel Data Warehouse, our first ever Data Warehouse appliance, and 3 releases of Fast Track Data Warehouse. Val holds an M.B.A. in Strategic Management and Marketing from Wharton Business School, a Ph.D. in Neural Networks, M.Sc. in Computing, and B.Sc. in Mathematics and Electronics. He has published 11 academic papers, and co-authored three Big Data books - Predictive Analytics with Microsoft Azure Machine Learning: Build and Deploy Actionable Solutions in Minutes (2 editions) and Introducing Microsoft Azure HDInsight.