Insight and strategy company The Lab has announced the appointment of Ron Ramaiya as head of data science, effective immediately.
The appointment follows a series of new staff hires and new client wins by The Lab over the past six months and the launch of its new artificial intelligence and machine learning division, Lab AI.
In his new role, Ron will be responsible for The Lab’s data science capability and will lead Lab AI. He will report to The Lab co-founder and CEO, Neale Cotton.
Ron has 25 years’ experience in data, analytics, product development, insights and commercialisation, with a specific focus in the past decade on AI and machine learning disciplines. His resume includes senior roles at Seven West Media, AMP Financial Services and Foxtel.
Neale Cotton said: “I’m excited to have Ron join us. He is a genuine industry pioneer in AI and brings deep experience and knowledge to our business and our clients.
“At The Lab, we rely on powerfully insightful data to create brilliant leaps from fresh perspectives.
“Traditionally, our data sources have come from qualitative data helping us understand people, conversations, needs, wants and beliefs, as well as cultural insights allowing us to decode the tectonic shifts in society that happen around us.
“As conversations continue to build and flourish online through social media, and other data sources become available that help us understand and predict human behaviour, we are increasingly harnessing the digital world, AI and machine learning for insight,” he said.
“That is where Lab AI steps in. We believe that by combining human ingenuity and technology we can enhance our understanding of the world around us and be first to new insight for our clients.”
Ron said: “A major part of my new role is to head up Lab AI, which we’re proud to bring to market. Lab AI is using AI to harness all the naturally occurring conversations on the web, and other data sources, to help clients understand a topic, a category, a trend, or an audience more quickly and more deeply than ever before.
“We are now applying machine learning models that think like we do, to unearth powerful insights about human behaviour and contemporary Australian culture at mass scale. It’s an incredibly exciting and innovative development for The Lab and the marketing industry in general.”