Jeff Heaton, Ph.D., Vice President, Data Science, leads a team of data scientists and data science engineers at RGA. His teams are responsible for RGA’s data science platform, as well as deploying, maintaining, and supporting multiple commercial predictive models deployed externally to RGA customers. He has experience with Python, R, XGBoost, TensorFlow, PyTorch, and Spark. With more than 20 years of insurance experience in underwriting, retrocession, and premium calculation, Jeff works directly with business leaders across multiple divisions to bring models into production usage.
Jeff joined RGA in 2001 as a member of the Information Technology (IT) group and worked to design and implement systems for retrocession administration and premium calculation. He transitioned to a data science role in 2013 and works to bridge the gap between complex data science problems and proven software development.
He is a frequent speaker and author for organizations such as the Society of Actuaries (SOA) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and for academic journals. Jeff has authored several books on artificial intelligence and teaches a graduate course at Washington University in St. Louis on this subject. He is on the industry advisory board at both Washington University and St. Louis University. Jeff is an artificial intelligence social media influencer with over 75,000 subscribers on YouTube and 10,000 followers on Twitter.
Jeff is a senior member of the IEEE and a Fellow of the Life Management Institute (FLMI). He holds a Master of Information Management (MIM) degree from Washington University in St. Louis and a Ph.D. in computer science from Nova Southeastern University.