The next Statistical Society (NSW Branch) montly talk is to be given Tuesday evening at UTS. Details appear below. Cheers, Michael Date: Tuesday, 24 June 2014 Time: 6:00pm - 6.30pm: Refreshments 6:30pm - 7.30pm: Lecture 7:30pm - 8:00pm: Dinner Venue: The University of Technology Sydney, Building 10, CB10.02.450B, 235 Jones Street, Ultimo, NSW 2007. Dr. Jan Luts The Search Party Data Science @ The Search Party The Search Party is a Sydney-based technology platform that is a positive disruptor for the recruitment industry. We have created the first online marketplace for talent which makes it quicker and easier to hire better people, whilst for recruitment agencies we provide a sustainable and profitable revenue stream. In this presentation I will give an overview of the various challenges that we are facing to extract value from the large amounts of data that are daily circulating in our software platform. These data originate from job seekers, employers and recruiters, and processing them requires interdisciplinary work at the intersection of statistics, machine learning, data mining, computer science, information retrieval and natural language processing. The ultimate goal is to accurately match vacancies with job seekers and automate the recruitment service. Biography of Dr. Jan Luts Jan Luts received a Master of Information Sciences, option Multimedia, from Universiteit Hasselt, Belgium, in 2003. He also received Master degrees in Bioinformatics and Statistics from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, in 2004 and 2005, respectively. After obtaining his PhD at the Department of Electrical Engineering (ESAT) of Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in 2010, he worked in postdoctoral research for a further two years at the institution. In 2012 Jan moved to Australia where he worked as a postdoctoral researcher in Statistics at the School of Mathematical Sciences in the University of Technology, Sydney. After two years in the role he moved into the private sector as Data Scientist at The Search Party (formerly Tempurer) - an independent provider of skilled consultants for transformational information technology and business projects.