Adam Hornsby, senior data scientist, dunnhumby
Who is he?
Adam is a psychology graduate from University College London who in his spare time is completing a PhD into consumer preference formation and decision-making. He is responsible for developing advanced machine learning techniques that deliver benefits for clients and has also delivered dunnhumby’s applied machine learning training course.
What did he do?
Although just 26, Adam has already had a significant impact on the analytics processes being used by dunnhumby and on the value it is able to create for clients. As part of his role in deploying machine learning within the business, he has influenced senior leadership to invest in a new data science eco-system. As part of a drive to democratise data science, he built a fully-automated system which scores six machine learning models each month which are delivered to one major client with little need for operational management. These scores identify which model is the best for forecasting customer behaviour, looking at how behavioural changes impact purchasing. Advanced machine learning techniques he applied to identifying key purchasing characteristics of one client’s customers led to an annual profit increase of over £1.2 million. As a result, the client has been able to secure extra budget to invest in optimised marketing. An algorithm he developed as part of his PhD has automated the creation of customer segments by dunnhumby’s analysts, removing weeks of workload from its 350-plus analysts. The computational model he is developing in his studies will be tested in the recommendation engine of a major UK supermarket.
What did the judges say?
Being a Kaggle Master tells you Adam has real skills. Increasing profits for a client shows he is no unicorn. Exceptional.
