África Periáñez is the founder and CEO of Yokozuna Data. She leads a team of data scientists and data engineers who develop a state-of-the-art machine learning platform that predicts individual player behavior. Using cutting-edge machine learning techniques, she aims to obtain a thorough understanding of players' behavior and to accurately. predict their actions in order to contribute to the development of data-driven, personalized games. She is a senior data scientist and researcher with 14+ years of experience and holds a PhD in Mathematics from the University of Reading (UK), a Master of Advanced Studies in String Theory Physics carried out at CERN (Switzerland), and an MSc in Theoretical Physics from the Autonomous University of Madrid (Spain).. She has worked as a research scientist in renowned institutions such as CERN (under a Marie Curie individual fellowship), RIKEN in Japan (working with the K computer, one of the fastest supercomputers in the world), DWD in Germany (German Weather Service, working in satellite data assimilation), or the University of Reading in the UK. She is the co-author of multiple peer-reviewed articles and has been a speaker in numerous international conferences and regular seminars. She also has significant industry experience at SPSS Inc., IBM, Silicon Studio, and now Keywords Studios.
