Women In Data Science

Ballan brings multiple perspectives to her current work on Connected Cars—drawing on expertise in data science and neuroscience gained during her ever-changing career in academia, entrepreneurship and consulting. Ballan grew up in Turkey where it’s not unusual for women to pursue careers as scientists. In her youth, she was inspired by Mission Impossible TV shows where agents used futuristic technologies like fingerprint recognition and iris detection. She also loved cars. “Those were the things that I was really interested in. And I think my journey started from there,” she explained during a conversation with Stanford’s Margot Gerritsen, Stanford professor and host of the Women in Data Science podcast. After studying engineering in college, she pursued her love of cars to work for Bridgestone in Turkey. “I love patterns. And our problem was the tire patterns, how we can identify the right pattern and then balance the car on that right pattern.” She left there for a chance to develop fingerprint recognition