Fireside Chat with Dawn Woodard

  • Dawn Woodard | Uber Maps

Fireside Chat between Eric Horvitz and Dawn Woodard.

Speaker Details

Dr. Dawn Woodard leads data science for Uber Maps, which is the mapping platform used in Uber’s rider app, driver app, and decision systems (such as pricing and dispatch). The team’s technologies include road map and points of interest definition, map search, route optimization, travel time prediction, and navigation. Dr. Woodard received her PhD in statistics from Duke University, after which she became a faculty member in the School of Operations Research and Information Engineering at Cornell. There she developed forecasting methods for ambulance decision support systems, in collaboration with several ambulance organizations. After receiving tenure at Cornell, she joined Microsoft Research for her sabbatical, where she created travel time prediction methods for use in Bing Maps. She then transitioned to a role at Uber, building and leading their Marketplace Optimization Data Science organization. The team creates Uber’s marketplace-related technologies, such as dispatch, pricing, and incentives. It is now one of the premier data science teams at Uber and includes specialists in operations research, economics, statistics, and machine learning. She recently transitioned to her current role in Maps.

Series: MSR AI Distinguished Lectures and Fireside Chats