Hilary Mason, lead scientist at bitly, a service that helps users collect, organize, shorten and share links on the Web, will present as part of the Complex Systems Spire Speaker Series on Friday, April 13 from 2 to 3:30 pm in the Fletcher Allen's Davis Auditorium.

Mason's work focuses on finding sense in vast data sets. She will present the history of machine learning, covering some of the most significant developments taking place over the last two decades, especially the fundamental math and algorithmic tools employed.

Mason is a former computer science professor with a background in machine learning and data mining and has published numerous academic papers. She is most known for the short Ignite talk, “How to Replace Yourself with a Very Small Shell Script.”

Mason is also a co-founder of HackNY, a non-profit organization that connects talented student hackers from around the world with startups in New York City. She recently started the data science blog Dataists and is a member of hacker collective NYC Resistor.

This presentation is free and open to the public.