Dr Jon Cardoso-Silva is Assistant Professor (Education) at the LSE Data Science Institute. He first joined LSE in September 2021 as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Methodology. Since January 2022 he has been a permanent member of staff at the DSI carrying out teaching and scholarly work in education.
Jon acts as the DSI’s de facto Deputy Head of Education and represents the institute at LSE teaching/education fora including the Departmental AI lead forum. He is deeply committed to high-quality teaching and innovative pedagogical practices in data science, particularly those involving Generative AI.
Jon leads the teaching and development of DS105 (Data for Data Science) and DS205 (Advanced Data Manipulation). These undergraduate courses focus on developing data collection and manipulation skills guided by the best practices in code writing and effective group collaboration. Jon's teaching style is grounded on relationship-rich education and project-based learning, encouraging students to build connections with him and other course instructors beyond the classroom. His effective use of Slack messaging for teaching, interacting, and giving feedback to students earned him the LSESU Teaching Awards for Feedback & Communication in 2023.
Jon's scholarly interests lie primarily in pedagogical practices in data science and the exploration of innovative teaching methods. He co-leads the GENIAL project with DSI Affiliate Dr Marcos Barreto, which investigates the impact of tools such as ChatGPT, GitHub and Copilot on programming skills and critical thinking in undergraduate and postgraduate courses at LSE. The GENIAL project, funded by the Eden Centre and the Data Science Institute, has been presented at several LSE and UK-wide conferences, including the Advance HE Teaching & Learning Conference 2024 and the Cambridge Generative AI in Education Conference 2024. The project team has had a paper accepted for publication in the November 2024 edition of the LSE Public Policy Review journal (preprint is available here).
Beyond the GENIAL project, Jon leads several internal projects at the DSI, guiding undergraduate student research assistants (typically former students) in applying the skills learned in their courses to real-world problems.
Dr Cardoso-Silva obtained his PhD in Computer Science from King's College London in 2018. His PhD research focused on optimisation, network science, and machine learning applications. Jon has prior industry work experience as a full-stack software developer for multi-national software company INDRA and as a Lead Data Scientist at Data Science Brigade, a Brazilian data science consultancy. Before joining DSI, Jon created Python & R packages for anthropological research, VIMuRe, a project led by DSI Affiliate Eleanor Power.