My name is [Florian Leitner](About%20me.md). I have over two decades of experience building information extraction, retrieval, and recommendation systems, from junior data scientist to engineering manager level. As a professional, I strive to excel at Theory Y-based leadership through intent, relationship building through conversations and communication, and any kind of data analytics (elementary statistics to deep learning). I do that concretely by cultivating an [Agile Strategy](Agile%20Strategy.md) focused on the [5 Lean capabilities](5%20Lean%20Capabilities.md) to maximize the [flow towards client value](Value%20Stream%20Mapping.md), and a [mindset](2025-09-01%20Mindset%20is%20all%20you%20need%20(in%20leadership).md) of [leading through intent](Intent-based%20Leadership.md) rather than orders and commands. I started my data science career in the life sciences in 2001, applying machine learning to the domains of structural biology, oncology, and neuroscience. In that role, I developed advanced NLP, machine learning, and data mining techniques at Novartis and several renowned European research centers. I have [published](https://scholar.google.es/citations?user=EkXLlysAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra) as first author [in Nature Biotechnology](https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt0910-897). Years before Kaggle even existed, I was already organizing [data science community challenges](https://biocreative.bioinformatics.udel.edu/). I have directed an [international research collaboration on distributed text mining](https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/gb-2008-9-s2-s6), worked for IT startups, and founded a [data operations consultancy](https://datacatalytics.com). In 2015, I joined [Ryan Terpstra](https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanterpstra/) at Selerity, a FinTech startup based in Manhattan, NY, as a Senior Data Scientist to apply these same techniques to news and documents in finance. Eventually, I [became the organization's CTO](https://www.selerityinc.com/about/). After the acquisition of Selerity by the ION Group, I now am the Head of Machine Learning at [ION Analytics](https://iongroup.com/analytics/). Today, I coach junior personnel, data scientists and senior engineers on the topics of machine learning, data science, and data engineering (as found in the Science and Technology sections of this knowledge base). I aspire to bring more transparency to the capital markets, and transcend human suffering through the application of the scientific method and taking a [principles-driven approach](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_7_Habits_of_Highly_Effective_People). With the advent of end-user-friendly large language models, my strategic objective is to convert everyone at work in into self-directed junior data scientists by teaching [The Art of Statistics](https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/294857/the-art-of-statistics-by-spiegelhalter-david/9780241258767) and the use of [prompt engineering](LLM%20Techniques.md). Collaborating with world-class product teams on applying [lean capabilities](5%20Lean%20Capabilities.md) and [agile strategies](Agile%20Strategy.md) to challenges in the biotech and financial domains gives me joy. I hold a PhD in Bioinformatics (with distinction) from the Autonomous University of Madrid in [Alfonso Valencia's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfonso_Valencia) lab, where I published the F-measured Average Precision (FAP) [ranking evaluation metric](Ranking%20evaluation%20metrics.md). Please find my [full CV](https://datacatalytics.com/docs/Florian_Leitner_CV.pdf) on [datacatalytics.com](https://datacatalytics.com/), my professional landing site.