Data Journeys

Dan Wulin is the Director of Data Science at Wayfair: an international e-commerce company specializing in home goods. Wayfair is a $5B company growing 40% year-over-year, with 10 million products and over 8,700 employees around the world. Their data science team is 80-people strong and growing fast, using econometrics to optimize prices, biostatistics to boost marketing, and computer vision to personalize product recommendations. Prior to joining Wayfair, Dan studied Math & Physics as an undergraduate at Columbia University and, thereafter, received his PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Chicago. Coming out of school, he worked as a consultant at Boston Consulting Group for a year in Chicago before transitioning to Wayfair in Boston. In this conversation, we cover a wide-range of topics, including: His childhood obsession with text-based multiplayer RPGs like Gemstone Dan’s roots in academia, how studying the physics of superconductors taught him (painfully) how to break down complex probl