Features

KDD/Data Mining has grown into an important vibrant field of scientific research and the importance of our field is growing by the day in very demonstrable ways -- not just in theory but real applications touching all our lives: search engines, marketing/predictive applications, fundamental contributions in science data analysis and database technology - SIGKDD must evolve to the next level to match this maturation. I would utilize

SIGKDD resources to lead the development of the following areas aggressively:

1. A formal public outreach and awareness program to improve the image of data mining in the eyes of the public and government -- we are not well represented and the field has suffered unnecessarily
2. A serious effort to build an infra-structure and data sets for benchmark tests (as in SIGIR TREC and other fields) to allow researchers and companies to compare performance and establish significant benchmarks
3. A publishing platform to represent the field including a magazine and powerful on-line presence with interesting benefits to SIGKDD membership
4. A more aggressive program for collaborating with academic institutions on academic curricula, courses, and professional certifications. Establishing academic fields of study is the only way for our field to continue to grow with bright minds and fresh blood.

Biography
Usama Fayyad (www.fayyad.com/usama) has been with the field of KDD/Data Mining ever since its inception in 1989 and has played a founding role in organizing the First International Conference, Chairing the first conference under SIGKDD after joining ACM, contributing to the first books in the field and founding the primary journal in 1996 and the ACM Newsletter SIGKDD.

He is currently CEO of Open Insights, LLC, a data strategy, technology and consulting firm he founded to help enterprises understand data strategy and deploy data-driven solutions that effectively and dramatically grow revenue and competitive advantages. Up until September 2008, he was Yahoo!'s chief data officer and executive vice president of Research & Strategic Data Solutions. Fayyad was the industry's first chief data officer, responsible for Yahoo!'s global data strategy, architecting Yahoo!'s data policies and systems, prioritizing data investments, and managing the Company's data analytics and data processing infrastructure. Fayyad also founded and managed the Yahoo! Research organization with offices around the world. Yahoo! Research is building the premier scientific research organization to develop the new sciences of the Internet, on-line marketing, and innovative interactive applications.

Prior to joining Yahoo!, Fayyad co-founded and led the DMX Group, a data mining and data strategy consulting and technology company that was acquired by Yahoo! in 2004. In early 2000, he co-founded and served as CEO of Revenue Science, Inc.(digiMine, Inc.), a data analysis and data mining company that built, operated and hosted data warehouses and web analytics for some of the world's largest enterprises in online publishing, retail, manufacturing, telecommunications and financial services. The company today specializes in Behavioral Targeting and advertising networks. Fayyad's professional experience also includes five years spent leading the data mining and exploration group at Microsoft Research and building the data mining products for Microsoft's server division. From 1989 to 1996 Fayyad held a leadership role at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where his work in the analysis and exploration of scientific databases gathered from observatories, remote-sensing platforms and spacecraft garnered him the top research excellence award that Caltech awards to JPL scientists, as well as a U.S. Government medal from NASA.

Fayyad earned his Ph.D. in engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (1991), and also holds BSE's in both electrical and computer engineering (1984); MSE in computer science and engineering (1986); and M.Sc. in mathematics (1989). He has published over 100 technical articles in the fields of data mining, databases, and Artificial Intelligence, is a Fellow of the AAAI and a Fellow of the ACM, has edited two influential books on data mining and launched and served as editor-in-chief of both the primary scientific journal in the field of data mining (Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery) and the primary newsletter in the technical community published by the ACM: SIGKDD Explorations. He is active in the academic community and holds adjunct professor positions in Australia and Hong Kong.