Please join us for the this Change this week as we welcome Dr. Skyler Speakman from IBM Research -- Africa <http://www.research.ibm.com/labs/africa/>. *What: *Micro-loan Credit Scoring Based on Mobile Phone Data *When: *Tuesday, Jan 19 at 12pm *Where: *The Allen Center, CSE 203 *Abstract: *Mobile money, or the ability to make send and receive money through feature phones, has swept through Eastern Africa in the past few years. IBM believes this technology will serve as the building block for more complex, risk-based financial services tailored for the growing lower and middle classes. This talk will demonstrate how two common themes in data science, boosting and transfer learning, are being used to create credit scores based on mobile phone usage. *Bio:* Dr. Skyler Speakman is a research scientist at IBM Research -- Africa where he applies multiple flavors of data science to large-scale, real world problems. Most recently he has been working in the Financial Services space which focuses on using technology and non-traditional data sources to increase the breadth and depth of financial services to millions of Africans. He completed his doctorate from Carnegie Mellon University and lives in Nairobi, Kenya, with his wife and young son.