Data science can look very different from one company to the next, and it’s generally difficult to get a consistent opinion on the question of what a data scientist really is.

That’s why it’s so important to speak with data scientists who apply their craft at different organizations — from startups to enterprises. Getting exposure to the full spectrum of roles and responsibilities that data scientists are called on to execute is the only way to distill data science down to its essence.

That’s why I wanted to chat with Ian Scott, Chief Science Officer at Deloitte Omnia, Deloitte’s AI practice. Ian was doing data science as far back as the late 1980s, when he was applying statistical modeling to data from experimental high energy physics as par of his PhD work at Harvard. Since then, he’s occupied strategic roles at a number of companies, most recently including Deloitte, where he leads significant machine learning and data science projects.