SAN JOSE, Calif. -

FICO chief analytics officer Scott Zoldi recently reached the century mark, achieving another data-science career milestone with his 100th software patent application.

Zoldi has been an inventor on 100 patent applications for machine learning and AI software technologies and techniques. Of the 100 patent applications, FICO said 47 have been granted, and 53 are pending.

In his nearly 20-year career with FICO, the innovations he has pioneered have helped FICO products transform entire industries. The company highlighted he has developed unique machine learning inventions for financial fraud, anti-money laundering, cybersecurity and collections, as well as fundamental data science capabilities.

“Dr. Scott Zoldi is a tremendous asset to FICO and our customers worldwide,” FICO chief executive officer Will Lansing said in a news release. “Scott’s non-stop creativity in developing AI, machine learning and analytic technologies is captured in the large portfolio of intellectual property he has produced. His work has propelled FICO’s competitive advantage in our fraud, compliance, cybersecurity and collections business units and within our corporate body of machine learning applications.

“Beyond the data science lab, Scott brings innovative thinking and enthusiasm to every customer conversation, industry speaking engagement and team meeting,” Lansing continued.

Zoldi’s patent work addresses a broad range of domains, including:

— Fraud analytics
— Cybersecurity
— Collections and credit risk
— Unstructured data analytics
— Unsupervised machine learning
— Utility analytics
— Self-learning machine learning models
— Explainable and ethical AI
— Deep learning algorithms
— Anti-money laundering
— Mobile analytics

“FICO is driven to help our customers operationalize analytic innovation,” said Stuart Wells, executive vice president of products and technology and chief technology officer at FICO. “They are looking for practical ways to put AI and machine learning to work today, to solve business problems and work more efficiently.

“Scott’s work is at the heart of our broader initiatives to operationalize AI, ML, and other emerging technologies,” Wells added.

In total, FICO currently holds 197 US and foreign patents, and 102 pending patent applications.

Zoldi and his team will present many of their latest analytic innovations at FICO World on Nov. 4-7 in New York. He will also present the closing keynote address on ethical AI.

“I am endlessly fascinated by the behavioral patterns and predictive insights that data can yield, and developing new machine learning algorithms to capture them,” Zoldi said. “During my nearly 20 years at FICO, I have had the opportunity to apply my analytic curiosity to develop machine learning applications addressing a wide range of seemingly unpredictable human and machine behaviors.

“I am thankful to be surrounded by brilliant colleagues at FICO who have influenced my thinking, and who have co-authored numerous of the patent applications. It is a true honor to have the novelty of my work acknowledged by patent offices around the globe and in use across FICO’s customer base,” Zoldi went on to say.

Zoldi previously participated in an episode of the Auto Remarketing Podcasted recorded in San Francisco earlier this year during the Vehicle Finance Conference hosted by the American Financial Services Association. Zoldi described what clean data really is.

That conversation is available below.