The Business of Data Mining

By Bradley Cusnier and Santiago Rodriguez
APR 29, 2017

On Monday, April 10, Saint Thomas Aquinas High School’s (STA) Director of Instructional Technology, Mrs. Lisa Gustinelli, welcomed Mr. Jose Berrios and Mr. Alex Polajenko to the campus. Mr. Berrios, Director of Software Engineering, and Mr. Polajenko, Senior Software Engineer, are two of Lexisnexis’ finest employees.

Lexisnexis is a company that collects data for markets such as healthcare, social media and insurance companies, as well as law enforcement and politicians. The information they collect serves a range of purposes from determining risk factors when companies do business to reconstructing crime scenes on cold cases for law enforcement. By creating a system for collecting accurate data, they can solve problems efficiently for their clients. This involves designing, creating, and maintaining all systems for the duration of their lifetimes. Lexisnexis’ clients include the Secret Service, certain FBI field officers, Google, and BMW.

Upon their arrival, Mr. Berrios and Mr. Polajenko spoke to AP Computer Science teacher Mr. Hoang’s class and afterwards visited Mrs. Daly-Asquini’s AP Computer Science Principles class. At two-thirty sharp, the members of the National Technical Honor Society and STA Robotics Program met in the STAR Lab for an open forum discussion with the two representatives from Lexisnexis. Mr. Berrios and Mr. Polajenko talked about how data and computer science help form new perspectives of the world and influence decision-making in everyday life. The students really appreciated the representatives of Lexisnexis taking time, from their very busy schedule, to visit the Raider campus.

For a company like Lexisnexis that has a large vault of sensitive data, security is top priority which means a data breach is almost unthinkable. Good luck hacking them.