DJ Patil
Former U.S. Chief Data Scientist
Fireside Chat with Christopher Kirchhoff:
AI in government
Fireside Chat Summary:
Join two of the most influential voices at the intersection of technology, policy, and national security for a rare fireside chat. DJ Patil, the first U.S. Chief Data Scientist and a pioneer in bringing data science to the forefront of government and industry, sits down with Christopher Kirchhoff, former National Security Council Director and co-founder of the Pentagon’s Silicon Valley office, the Defense Innovation Unit.
Together, they’ll explore how AI and data are reshaping not just industries, but entire nations. Expect an engaging conversation on the future of AI in government, defense, and society—and the challenges of governing technologies that evolve faster than policy.
About | DJ Patil
DJ Patil is an entrepreneur, investor, scientist, and leader in public policy. He has held senior roles in industry, academia, and government and his work has been featured in two Michael Lewis books.
Notable early stage investments include Figma, Confluent, Ola in India, Monte Carlo, Chronosphere, Sumologic, Peoplehood, RelateIQ, and Rebellion Defense.
He is a board member for Devoted Health where he was a member of the founding team and CTO with the mission to build a health care system that takes care of every member like they were family. Previously he led the product teams at RelateIQ (acquired by Salesforce) and was founding board member for Crisis Text Line, which works to use new technologies to provide on demand mental and crisis support. At LinkedIn he was Chief Scientist, Chief Security Officer and led the data efforts which included recommendation systems like People You May Know, Who Viewed My Profile, and Jobs You May Like; new technologies like Kafka; and co-coining the term Data Scientist.
Dr. Patil’s public policy work includes being appointed by President Obama to be the first U.S. Chief Data Scientist, where his efforts led to the establishment of nearly 40 Chief Data Officer roles across the Federal government. He established new health care programs including the Precision Medicine Initiative (now the NIH All of Us program) and the Cancer Moonshot, as well as criminal justice reforms including the Data-Driven Justice and Police Data Initiatives that cover more than 94 million Americans. For his efforts in national security, he was awarded the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, the highest honor the department bestows on a civilian.
As a faculty member at the University of Maryland, his research focused on nonlinear dynamics and chaos theory, and he helped start a major research initiative on numerical weather prediction. As an AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow for the Department of Defense, Dr. Patil directed new efforts to leverage social network analysis and the melding of computational and social sciences to anticipate emerging threats to the US. He also co-chaired a major review of US efforts to prevent bioweapons proliferation in Central Asia and co-founded the Iraqi Virtual Science Library (IVSL).
And if you’ve read this far — he barely graduated from high school because of his math grades, but lucked out because of his local community college.