Upper School STEM Speaker Series Welcomes Principal Data Scientist from Slingshot Aerospace

As part of the Upper School STEM Speakers Series, we welcomed Dr. David Witman, a Principal Data Scientist at Slingshot Aerospace. Dr. Whitman spoke about his work on a wide range of machine learning (ML) problems including anomaly detection and reinforcement learning. Each year, Friends School's STEM Speaker Series hosts scientists from a variety of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields who share their professional journey and details about their research and work with interested students. Fields represented include astronomy, engineering, medicine, neuroscience, genetics, biology, and a variety of other disciplines.

About Dr. Witman:
Did you know machine learning (ML) can be used for more than just chatbots or detecting pictures of cats? In fact, there is a whole research area on how we can use ML to solve science problems! Dr. David Witman is a Principal Data Scientist at Slingshot Aerospace where he works on a wide range of ML problems including anomaly detection and reinforcement learning. With over 10 years of experience in the machine learning field, as it applies to government and defense related areas, he has used his expertise to find solutions to real-world problems. In addition to using ML for space applications, Dr. Witman’s background includes developing ML methods for epidemiological modeling/simulation, air/maritime threat detection, and hypersonic flight modeling/guidance. He received his bachelor's in mechanical engineering from Clarkson University and his PhD in scientific computing from Florida State University.