Daniel Rakotomalala
Data scientist and project lead, DEPP
Hi. I’m Daniel, a data scientist and project lead at DEPP, the statistical directorate of the French Ministry of Education. The data project I work on is IDEE, Innovations, Data and Experiments in Education. I did a PhD in economics, which is where my interest in causal inference comes from. Most of my code is R, and I write packages that make empirical work easier to check and to reproduce.

Experience and education
since 2024
Data scientist and IDEE project lead
DEPP, the statistical directorate of the French Ministry of Education
Project lead for the IDEE programme, in partnership with J-PAL Europe; statistical tooling and strategic large-scale data work for the directorate; statistical studies; technical training.
2022 – 2024
Data manager, IDEE programme
J-PAL Europe and DEPP
Responsible for the administrative-data track of the programme: public data catalogue and secure remote-access platform.
2021 – 2022
Teaching assistant in statistics and mathematics
Université de La Réunion
Undergraduate courses; built programs that generate varied statistics exercises.
2020 – 2021
Statistical studies and evaluation officer
Pôle emploi Réunion, regional directorate of the French public employment service
Quantitative evaluation of the effect of Pôle emploi employment services on return to work.
2018 – 2022
PhD in economics
Université de La Réunion
“Essay on some determinants of academic performances in Reunion Island”, supervised by Yves Croissant.
2016 – 2017
Master’s in applied economics, quantitative methods
Université de La Réunion
Quantitative methods and modelling for business; top of the class.