Clavius Distinguished Lecture

Christopher Clavius, S.J., was a celebrated 16th-century mathematician and astronomer. In 1582, upon request from Pope Gregory XIII, Clavius helped develop the Gregorian calendar, which is still in use today. For 45 years, Clavius was a university professor at the Jesuit-run Collegio Romano, now known as the Pontifical Gregorian University, where he advocated master classes to position Jesuit trainees at the forefront of European scholarship. One of his students, Matteo Ricci, S.J., later translated Clavius’ works into Chinese, which ushered in a period of scientific innovations in China. Widely considered the most influential scholar and teacher of the Renaissance, Clavius was an early advocate of Galileo Galilei, whose heliocentric model of the universe upended the longstanding Ptolemaic system.

Yike Guo, Ph.D., is a professor of computing science in the Department of Computing and founding director of the Data Science Institute at Imperial College London. Professor Guo also holds the position of chief technology officer of the tranSMART Foundation, a global open-source community using and developing data sharing and analytics technology for translational medicine. He received a first class honor degree in computing science from Tsinghua University, China, in 1985, and his Ph.D. in computational logic from Imperial College London in 1993 under the supervision of Professor John Darlington. His research focus is in the area of big data analytics with broad application to science, engineering, and medicine using data mining and machine learning technology.

Guo has served in leadership roles at two corporations—CEO at InforSense, as pinout company of Imperial College London that he founded, and chief innovation officer at IDBS—that have transformed his research achievements into technology products that have more than 50,000 users worldwide. He has, in the past two decades, received and managed research funding as P.I./co-P.I. of over £130 million (£35 million as P.I.) with significant social and economic impact. Guo also advises start-up companies and other public and private sectors on big data, A.I., and data economy strategy. In 2017, he was named one of the 10 most influential data scientists in China.