ManTech Data and AI Team - Profile Q+A - Dr. Graham Katz
Name: Dr. Graham Katz
Title: Distinguished Engineer
Job Description: As Distinguished Engineer within the Data and AI Practice, I lead a team of Data Scientists and Data Engineers to develop and deliver innovative Data and AI solutions to ManTech clients. In part, my role is to assure the team maintains scientific and technical excellence.
- What are you passionate about?
Understanding the principles governing the behavior of complex systems. And ultimate frisbee.
- What drew you to ManTech?
As a long-standing technology company in the Federal space with a focus on innovation, ManTech is an exciting place for someone looking not only to use innovative technologies, such as Data and AI, but also to see how those technologies make a mission impact. ManTech’s investment in innovation provides great opportunities to really develop solutions with cutting-edge technologies.
- What do you like most about ManTech?
One thing that has very pleasantly surprised me coming to ManTech is, despite its being a large company, it has a very collegial feel. Maybe that’s because at ManTech, there is a clear focus on delivering innovative excellence to our customers that furthers their mission.
- What is or has been the most unusual or interesting job you’ve ever had?
In college for a few months, I had a career as a professional smeller (for a family trying to locate the source of an odor). That was unusual. But my most interesting job (before coming to ManTech, of course) was teaching in the then-brand-new Cognitive Science program at the University of Osnabrueck. I got to work alongside neuroscientists studying the brain, and computer scientists building soccer-playing robots, philosophers studying reasoning, and AI engineers building conversation systems. The current explosion we are seeing around Data and AI and the esprit-de-corps of the ManTech Data and AI Practice very much remind me of that!
- What advice do you have for those looking to start a career in Data and AI?
Two things: Learn the scientific fundamentals and play with software tools. These recommendations are in tension – too much time learning scientific and mathematical foundations will not leave you enough time to become a doer, but too much time spent tackling concrete problems with specific tools will leave you up the creek without a paddle when the software landscape changes. Also, I think everybody finds that it is easier to learn Data and AI fundamentals (ML algorithms, evaluation metrics, data modeling, etc.) when using them to solve problems in a low-stress “play” mode. If you’re not enjoying it, you’re in the wrong field!
- What’s the coolest thing you’re working on now?
One project I’m really excited about is an Internal Research and Development (IRAD) project focused on evaluating AI models and model tuning with an eye towards solving the kinds of problems of ManTech’s clients. There is an enormous amount of research on evaluating AI models in general and model providers will trot out academic evaluation metrics to show how good their models are. But wouldn’t it be great to have metrics that reflect how the models will impact the customer mission before you build the solution, rather than after?
- What do you wish people understood about Data and AI?
That Generative AI is a tool. Particularly with the advances in “consumer AI” – which have truly amazing capabilities – it’s easy for people to anthropomorphize AI — and that can cloud professional judgment. Generative AI might be the right tool for your task, but maybe training a supervised Machine Learning model is the right way to deliver value to a client.
- How do you balance career and home life?
I try not to mix my work into my home life very much, so when I’m at home I can be fully present. That’s one of the reasons I really value coming into the office. There, I can focus on work – and when I leave, I can leave it. Of course, that can make for some very late dinners, when there are project deadlines or proposals (which my dog doesn’t mind nearly as much as my partner does).
- What’s your favorite place in the world?
I lived in Europe for a decade after finishing graduate school, so I visited many beautiful places, and I truly love Sued-Tirol (the German-speaking part of Northern Italy); but my favorite singular place is my grandmother’s beach cottage in Massachusetts, where I spent every summer as a child.
10. What got you interested in Data & AI?
One summer in college I was working for the Office of Legislative Services for the State of New Jersey. They had purchased their first computer and my job for the summer was computerizing their bookkeeping, which had previously been done by hand on paper ledgers. After a few weeks I started to think about how many of the other office jobs – besides bookkeeper – could be “computerized”: How about the secretary who spent her time scheduling meetings and drafting letters? It became clear to the 20-year-old me that to computerize most office jobs you’d need a computer that understood human language, and so I went back to college specifically seeking courses about that. I found them and discovered my career calling!
