Dawn Woodard

Affiliation
Senior Data Science Manager of Maps, Uber

Educational Background
Duke University: PhD, Statistics (2007)
Stanford University: BS, Mathematical and Computational Science (2001)

About Dawn
Dawn Woodard leads data science for Uber Maps, which is the mapping platform used in Uber’s rider app, driver app, and decision systems (such as pricing and dispatch). The team’s technologies include road map and points of interest definition, map search, route optimization, travel time prediction, and navigation.

Woodard earned her PhD in statistics from Duke University, after which she became a faculty member in the Cornell School of Operations Research and Information Engineering. There, she developed generic ativan prices forecasting methods for ambulance decision support systems in collaboration with several ambulance organizations.

After receiving tenure at Cornell, Dawn went on sabbatical at Microsoft Research, where she created travel time prediction methods for use in Bing Maps. She then transitioned to a role at Uber, building and leading their Marketplace Optimization Data Science organization. The team creates Uber’s marketplace-related technologies, such as dispatch, pricing, and incentives. It is now one of the premier data science teams at Uber and includes specialists in operations research, economics, statistics, and machine learning.