Data Scientist and Co-Founder, Diagonal Works

Three questions for Gala

What has your career looked like to date?

My career started as a secondary maths teacher. While studying my MSc, I taught myself to code and pivoted into technology. I joined a start-up doing network analysis, consulting in fibre optic network design. There, I discovered geospatial data science and the world of urban planning.

I moved into a big corporation to do transportation planning and worked on civil infrastructure problems such as sewage networks and modelling ship movements. I liked the variety but missed the freedom of innovation. So, I got a job at a company working on understanding neighbourhoods through social media data. I became passionate about using analytics to explore and break down built environment and social inequalities.

In 2021, I co-founded Diagonal, a company working with organisations changing cities, helping them embrace the scale and nuance of urban data. Our tools are open so that our analysis results are transparent and accessible to the people who are impacted by the projects we support.

What do you do in your current position?

In my role I support organisations to ask questions which can be answered by the data available:

• I work with engineering to develop the features needed to ask complex questions
• I work with design to deliver analysis that is auditable and explorative
• I work with town planning to understand the intricate system of place-making.

How has your mathematics/statistics training been useful in your career?

My MSc gave me the tools to take real-world problems and think abstractly about them, represent them in mathematical terms and take advantage of solutions, algorithms, and approaches laid out in research. More than anything else, it gave me the confidence to know that with some research, collaboration, and good diagrams, I can reach a decent solution to a challenging problem.