Nick Berry posted about having cancer on Facebook.
Nick Berry posted about having cancer on Facebook.
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Nick Berry interview — A data scientist confronts his own mortality

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 32 min

Nick Berry has stage IV cancer. He is a first-class data scientist, but even he is not certain how much time he has left.

Without treatment, his doctors told him he has about six months to live. With treatment, including a new experimental cancer drug and chemotherapy, he could live for a couple of years. He would like to see both of his children graduate from high school. But he knows that he only has an 8% chance of living for five more years. Berry has confronted his own mortality, told his family about his chances, and shared it with friends on Facebook.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.