Underdog Scientist Cracks Code to Reduce Flight Delays
Jose Fonollosa knows the language of machines better than many people know their mother tongue. Fonollosa, a professor at the Signal Theory and Communications Department of Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña in Barcelona, Spain, has spent two decades studying machine learning and speech recognition. In 2006, he was part of a team of researchers that devised a new way for machines to translate Spanish to English in the European Parliament.
Why do some flights arrive early while others touch down hours late?
One afternoon a year ago, Sergey Kozub, a software developer in the Russian city of Kursk, was scrolling through messages on the popular programming forum topcoder when he hit on a link to Kaggle. Kaggle, the world’s largest open community of data scientists, had just partnered with GE and Alaska Airlines and challenged the public to come up with software that would reduce flight delays and make airlines more efficient and profitable.