Janet George: The multifaceted world of data storage

Taking an executive role at a storage company was a risk for Janet George because she knew little about manufacturing beforehand.

“I had to learn deeply about the device physics domain,” she says. She became familiar with arcane matters like bit counts, failure rates, temperature testing and the impact of voltage on storage cells in order to ensure her success.

George, who has worked for some of the most important companies in the technology industry, shares her career trajectory and the role of data science in the storage industry on this episode of the Women in Data Science podcast. Now in her fourth year at Western Digital, George continues to notice how much data science and mathematics come into play across the spectrum of the company’s business. From manufacturing to security and product development, “mathematics plays a very significant role,” she says.