Natasha Balac received her master's and PhD in computer science from Vanderbilt University with an emphasis in machine learning from large data sets. Her dissertation focused on creating and applying novel data mining techniques to mobile robots and real-time sensor data. She has been with the University of California at San Diego since 2003, leading multiple collaborations across a wide range of organizations in industry, government, and academia.

She's currently directing the Interdisciplinary Center for Data Science (ICData) at Calit2/Qualcomm Institute, and lectures in the area of big data and data science. She has led the Predictive Analytics Center of Excellence and collaborated on numerous government and research projects in the areas of analytics and visualization including with the NSF, NIH, NASA, CPUC, Smart Grid, and Smart City.

Dr. Balac founded and serves as the president and CEO of Data Insight Discovery, Inc. DID’s charter enables businesses to discover actionable insight from vast amounts of data.