“In pharmaceutical companies’ race to find treatments for deadly diseases, running an effective clinical trial is of paramount importance. But with literally millions of hospitals to choose from, how can a firm identify the ones that provide the best environment for success?

The answer lies in the data, says Jody Schechter, a data scientist at QuantumBlack. She and her team used data to build an algorithmic model that predicts how quickly a new clinical trial will enroll participants at different hospitals across the country.

It’s one of many projects she’s worked on at the data science consultancy. She finds the work to be continually exciting because it spans so many different industries.

“We deal with a lot of interesting data science questions,” she said. “But the biggest challenge is helping organizations see the value in analytics and working with them from top to bottom to advance their understanding of data in their decisions.”

Schechter didn’t understand how valuable data could be until she started exploring economics at the University of Michigan.”

The article: Alumni profile: Jody Schechter, S.M. ’14Using big data to answer million-dollar questions