[9][10] While at Kennedy, he participated in a student exchange program, visiting Toyokawa, Cupertino's sister city in Japan, in 1988.

While a faculty member at University of Maryland College Park, he used open datasets published by NOAA to improve numerical weather forecasting.

[14] His role was to anticipate threats connected to and surrounding terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and failed states (with an emphasis on human rights violations),[15] employing social network analysis to help anticipate these threats.

[16][10] Patil described himself as part of “the second wave of people”[17] who were to use data to detect signalled noise, a concern which grew following the 9/11 attacks.

[27] The information would enable investigation into patterns of injustice as well as the ability to see if systems in place were wanted or working.

Police departments struggled to release their data, primarily because it was not “collected well”, as Patil had mentioned in an interview.

[29] Efforts were taken to improve coding abilities of police superintendents[30] and homogenizing organization across the 18,000 jurisdictions on board.

Changing the approach to pre-trial incarceration would allow low-risk offenders to shorten jail time especially if they cannot afford bail.

[33] Patil had a special interest in using data to improve the medical field by way of the Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI).

PMI aimed to build the largest database of genomic information to increase understanding of cancer treatments, chronic disease, and rare diseases[34] The initiative was started as there is not a current dataset in which analyses and correlations can be made across gender and ethnic diversities.

He feared that, with the AHCA, people will be scared to donate their genomic information because it will expose pre-existing conditions.