Clean Technology Meets Data Science: News and Articles

  As we saw in the last post, a data scientist's role requires the ability to  capture, process, analyze and visualize the data.  While there are some off the shelf software tools, most applications in the clean tech and data science space require knowledge of a programming language in order to perform many of the tasks effectively.  The popular choices for a clean tech data scientist are 1.   Python : Python is probably the single most critical element in the data scientist’s toolkit. It’s a flexible, easily learnt computer language that is powerful because of the large stack of libraries that have been developed. Do you need to figure out how to get data from a website – or train a machine learning algorithm? The chances are that there is an existing library in Python that can be plugged into your code.     The main libraries that are necessary for any of the data science use cases are   scipy, numpy, statsmodel and pandas . These can be used fo...

  We've all got pictures in our mind of what certain occupations entail - and this may be very different from what actually happens! When I started my career as an environmental engineer working in a consulting firm, I had this vision of working outdoors all the time, helping to save the planet, interacting with community members who were anxious to solve the problem...... but the actual work turned out to be quite different. I spent at least half of my time in the office filing out forms and paperwork that were needed to meet regulations, analyzing data and my interactions with community members usually meant chatting with them about the samples we were collecting, if we were going to be in their way, and the weather that day. So what's a day in the life of a clean tech data scientist like? Sadly, it's not just running around the office shouting "Eureka" because you found something amazing that will help the planet - though those days do come by! Most of the time...

In the last few posts, we’ve talked about the type of careers and skills that are needed in order to become a clean tech data scientist. The field is expanding rapidly right now, with openings in almost every clean tech sector and across a wide range of organizations. Just check out our   jobs portal   to see the range of positions available right now - and these are just the ones we’ve highlighted!   But how do you become a clean tech data scientist?   Since this is a relatively new field, there really haven’t been degrees or courses so far that said “Masters in Environmental Data Science” or “PhD in Data Science and Clean Technology”! Of course, this is changing with a few universities beginning to offer programs in earth systems and data science or clean technology and data science, but these are still only a few in number and started only in the last couple of years.     If you’re starting your career and are interested in this field, the universities t...