Callie Federer | AI in Transportation

Freightvine

This week’s guest is Dr. Callie Federer, Senior Data Science Manager at DAT Freight & Analytics. Callie comes to the freight and transportation industry from a pretty non-traditional path - a Ph.D. in Computational Bioscience from the University of Colorado-Denver. After earning her PhD, she went straight into industry holding various data science roles in the medical, education, and advertising domains. She joined DAT about 18 months ago and currently manages and leads the data science team responsible for the development of all next-generation tools and models that DAT uses for its shipper, carrier, and broker customers. In our conversation we debate what Artificial Intelligence or AI is, what it does and does not include, and how other methodologies such as ML or OR complement the newer methods like generative AI or LLMs. Callie also describes the recently released AI-powered DAT iQ rating platform and how it is fundamentally different than other rating engines. We finish up with a discussion on how to manage and lead a team of highly skilled data analytics professionals in the very nuanced and quirky industry of freight transportation.