NASA is using data science to fill its data science skills gap Posted on : Jun 29 - 2021

With data scientists in high demand, NASA is pursuing a pioneering approach to filling its skills gaps.

All the evidence suggests it's tough to get hold of talented data scientists – and that's even true at NASA, says David Meza, acting branch chief of people analytics and senior data scientist at the US space agency.

So what does a skills gap look like at NASA? Meza says his team is still taking a "deep dive" into the organisation's data science talent demands – but clear patterns are emerging, particularly in terms of identifying capability that already exists within the organisation.

"One of the biggest challenges has been to identify where our data science skills are within NASA. It's not a terminology or an occupation that's been labelled data science within the government. It's still something that's in development to have a work role or an occupation of 'data science'," he says.

What's clear so far is that NASA has data talent across the organisation, some of which is not easily identified or categorised due to the wide range of work taking place at the space agency.

"You know, we're NASA, so we're doing a lot of that type of stuff," says Meza. "We need to identify how it's being done, in which organisations, what type of analytics they're doing, and then from there also to identify the data literacy of our other workforce."

That's where Meza's organisation comes in, with the team working on the creation of a workforce talent-mapping database to identify the data skills required for all kinds of projects, whether that's getting back to the Moon, going to Mars or working on scientific endeavours closer to home, such as climate change, aeronautical engineering or medical research.

"There's a wide range of things that we do within NASA. So we have a wide range of data sets and skill sets that we need to identify and make sure that we have the right people in the right place," says Meza. View More