Kirk Borne, a tenured professor of astrophysics and computational science at George Mason University, has joined Booz Allen Hamilton (NYSE: BAH) as a principal data scientist with the company’s strategic innovation group.
The company said Tuesday Borne, who specializes in data science education and research, will assume his duties beginning May 18.
Angela Zutavern, a vice president within SIG at Booz Allen, said he will mentor a team of more than 500 data scientists and help develop the curriculum, course criteria and educational materials for training programs on data science.
Borne has worked on data mining, data analytics, big data pedagogy and the use of analytics to bolster learning, retention and performance during his 12 years at GMU.
He is also a pioneer of astroinformatics, the use of data science in astronomy education and research.
Booz Allen said Borne helped develop the country’s first undergraduate program in data science at GMU and served as an adviser to the University of Maryland University College for its new graduate program in data analytics.
He is a board member at Soft10,  Syntasa, Aries Scientific and Cobalt Solutions, and a member of the Astroinformatics and Astrostatistics International Organization executive committee.
