Juan Miguel Lavista

Juan Miguel Lavista serves as the General Manager and Lab Director of the Microsoft AI For Good Research Lab, where he guides a dedicated team of data scientists and AI researchers. Within this role, he oversees a spectrum of AI-driven projects, spanning AI For Earth, AI for Humanitarian Action, AI For Accessibility and AI For Health, all contributing to Microsoft's commitment to positive societal impact. Juan's notable contribution involves his groundbreaking work on sudden infant death syndrome, which has been published in prestigious academic journals and extensively covered by major global media outlets.Juan's journey in data science began at Microsoft in 2009, where he played an integral part in designing and conducting randomized control experiments through the Microsoft Experimentation Platform (EXP) and led initiatives within the Bing Data Mining team. His pursuit of advancing data science led him to define and shape the discipline within Microsoft, as evidenced by his role as the editor of the Microsoft Journal of Applied Research (MSJAR).Prior to Microsoft, Juan co-founded alerts.com and spent six impactful years at the InterAmerican Development Bank, employing data science to analyze programs aimed at poverty reduction in Latin-America and the Caribbean.Juan holds computer science degrees from the Catholic University in Uruguay and a postgraduate degree in Data Mining and Machine Learning from Johns Hopkins University. He is a sought-after speaker, delivering talks worldwide, presenting at conferences, universities and TEDx events.