Jeff Hammerbacher

Early Career

Jeff Hammerbacher is a data scientist who has had a significant impact on the field of data science. He struggled academically at Harvard but eventually earned a bachelor's degree in Mathematics. After a brief stint as a quantitative analyst at Bear Stearns, he joined Facebook in 2006 as a Research Scientist.5 There, he began building software tools for data analysis and eventually led the data team, which absorbed what was then called "data infrastructure" and is now known as data engineering.4

Cloudera Co-Founder

After three years at Facebook, Hammerbacher left to co-found Cloudera, a maker of data management software, in 2009.5 He served as Cloudera's Chief Scientist until 2013.12

Transition to Biomedicine

In 2013, Hammerbacher transitioned into biomedicine. He was recruited by Dr. Eric Schadt, a computational biologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, to lead a research team of data scientists working on making personalized cancer treatments more "automated, practical and affordable".5 During this time, he continued to hold the title of Chief Scientist at Cloudera.5

Related Sciences

In 2020, Hammerbacher co-founded Related Sciences, a biotech venture creation firm focused on drug discovery.146 He currently serves as a Founder and Managing Partner at the company.13 Related Sciences leverages machine learning and data science techniques to accelerate drug discovery.47

Hammerbacher has been featured in numerous publications, including Forbes, Fast Company, MIT Technology Review, Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, and Bloomberg BusinessWeek, for his work in data science and biomedicine.2