Online Resumé

TLDR Profile #

Senior data professional with 20 years experience in technical and leadership positions. Most recently, working as Senior Data Scientist Engineer for startups in Berlin, Germany.

Building on a foundation in Management Information Systems (MIS) and Business Intelligence (BI), I’ve advanced my analytical skills through forecasting and predictive analytics into prescriptive tools that deliver actionable insights. My Ph.D. research in explainable ML helps build transparency and a high-level of trust in decision-support systems, which has always been my focus. Over the years, I’ve driven change and digital transformation in medium size enterprises. I thrive in forward-thinking organizations eager to drive impactful results, systems optimization and process automation by leveraging AI, ML, cutting-edge analytics, and data-driven strategies.

Technical Skills and Qualifications #

• PhD in Machine Learning (specific area: algorithmic development for explainable AI, with three published papers)
• Master of Science (with Distinction) in Business Intelligence
• Bachelor of Science in Microbiology
• Extensive, recent experience in prompt engineering experience and developing * ChatGPT-based products and services.
• Good working knowledge of NLP techniques and handling unstructured/text data
• Excellent knowledge of statistical and machine learning models for decision making.
• 20 years experience in database technologies (SQL, OLTP, OLAP, ETL, Data Warehouse, Star Schema, 3NF Schema)
• Python Programming (8 Years), Pandas, Numpy, Scikit-learn, Scipy, Statsmodels, XGBoost, Fast API, dramatiq, Flask, Jupyter, Anaconda
• R Programming (8 Years), Tidyverse and native.
• Tableau (2 Years)
• SAS/JMP (2 Years)
• GCP (2 Years), Datastore, BigQuery, CloudStorage
• AWS (2 Years)

Non-technical (Soft) Skills #

• Managing high performance teams of up to 25 people
• Controlling web and software development budgets of up to USD8M
• Team player at all levels from C-Suite and Senior Management Team to operational staff
• Proven track record rolling out Agile practices and coaching scrum masters and product owners
• Experienced meeting/workshop facilitator (innovation, prioritisation, strategy, team building)
• Experienced teacher/technical trainer
• Native English speaker, fluent in Italian, A2 in German and French

Career History #

Senior Data Scientist Engineer - Xapix Software GmbH (trading as Autopilot) #

• May 2023 - Present
• Creating (from inception to deployment and maintenance) a ChatGPT-based, end-to-end service for updating product pages on Amazon Marketplace.
  • Using dynamic prompt engineering and NLP based post-processing, the product automatically re-writes various sections of the product page, to include SEO keywords and phrases.
  • Improves the search-engine results page placement of the products, immediately resulting in increased sales.
  • Maintains a natural-sounding title, bullet points and description to remain appealing to the customer/reader.
  • Everything achieved in one round of prompting. No dialogue/intervention required for a fully automated service.
  • Successful in both English and German (a market niche).
  • New service resulted in dozens of new customer trials and signings. Customers see demostrable uplift in Page Views and Conversions in the order of $10Ks.
  • Maintaining the data warehouse in GCP Big Query for terabytes of data processed weekly comprising Amazon Seller statistics and financial data.
  • Created and maintained a suite of Colab Notebooks for management team to conduct impact reporting and customer pricing models.

Chief Data Officer and Co-Founder - Vishwavidya Pte Ltd (trading as EduX) #

• Feb 2021 - Apr 2023
• Modelling, organising and storing all company data in GCP Datastore, GCP BigQuery, GCP Cloud Storage, Kafka event logs, and memcached lookup keys.
• Collection and curation of publicly available data, and their transformation into document embeddings, data products and actionable business intelligence using Python scrapy, ElasticSearch, and JanusGraph/Gremlin.
• Ideating and evaluating machine learning driven features to improve the customer journey/experience to maximise customer engagement.
• Building a team of data professionals and fostering their understanding of the company and data strategy (hiring two data science graduates and a data engineering intern).
• Establishing and maintaining the data policy and governance (PII segregation and anonymization).
• Development of ML models to predict specific app user behaviours (goal completion models).
• Automation of ML pipeline (parameter optimisation and evaluation/comparison of multiple models), and versioning repository for models and preprocessing modules.
• Schema design and data model to support microservices architecture and lightweight, non-intrusive partner integration.
• Data ingest framework from the global internet with scrapy to our GCP DataStore transactional system and JanusGraph for graph analytics.
• Automated document reader, with open source passport AI library and python multi-processing.
• Combining BQ and GA into KPI’s, management info, and engagement analytic dashboards in Looker Studio.
• Custom Full-text search indices for end users, pattern matching and partner integration.
• Short text cleansing; a process for cleaning up snippets and captions from externally sourced text using (n-grams and word-embeddings, best regex discovery using grammatical evolution)
• LDA Similarity and/or graph-based search engine enhancement (currently using ElasticSearch full-text indexing capabilities)
• Social graph to track faculty and research contributions, determining which universities have prestige and social capital in a particular discipline

Freelance Analytics Consultant + Ph.D Research + University Lecturer + Startup Coach and Facilitator - Singapore, Sydney, London and Birmingham #

• May 2016 - January 2021
• Research leading to published work: CHIRPS: Explaining random forest classification, Ada-WHIPS: explaining AdaBoost classification with applications in the health sciences, gbt-HIPS: Explaining the Classifications of Gradient Boosted Tree Ensembles.
• Developing expertise various XAI methods and black box ML models (SHAP, LIME, Random Forests, Adaboost, XGBoost, and Random Forests, Extreme Pruning, Generalized Linear Models, Survival Models, Multi-state Life-cycle Models, Process Mining, Association Rules and Data Mining, Population-based search and modern optimization).
• Automation of complete ML pipeline from pre-processing through parameter optimisation, and evaluation.
• Generating flexible, dynamic, print-quality graphical results in Python (matplotlib, seaborn), R (ggplot, lattice and base graphics), and LaTeX (tikz).
• Communication and public speaking, delivering seminars and lectures.
• Research skills - reviewing complex academic literature to find gaps and opportunities.
• Designing and executing experiments to test potential solutions and assess the results using suitable metrics and statistics.
• Teaching Business Intelligence and tools (Tableau, SAP Lumira, SAS/JMP), Data and Statistics, designing curriculum including specialist workshops in Visualising Categorical Data.
• Data Wrangling and building pipelines in Alteryx, KNIME and RapidMiner.
• Developing an App engagement strategy using the Hooked model.
• Delivering training on Project/Programme/Portfolio management, and Agile delivery.

Business Analyst (Process Optimization) - Kaplan Singapore #

• Jan 2015 - Apr 2016
• Growing the newly created cross-functional BA team.
• Using R programming, Process Mining and tools (ProM, Fluxicon Disco), and setting up an OLAP (star schema) Data Warehouse with Tableau to identify performance trends and sources of inefficiency and proccess non-conformance, and using prescriptive analytics to propose improvements.
• Liaising with C-Suite and Senior Management Team, to design a Benefits Realization process, allowing department heads to confirm that delivered change yielded intended benefits, such as redeployment of existing human resources to more impactful work.

Interim IT Director (6 Week Secondment) - Kaplan Singapore #

• May 2014 - June 2014
• Continuity of IT operations and projects following sudden resignation of existing IT Director.
• Introducing Scrum and Kanban.
• Coaching and mentoring IT team, reviewing personal development plans and reducing retention risk.

Progamme Director (Technology Projects) - Kaplan International Colleges #

• May 2013 - Dec 2014
• Worked with the CEO to create project portfolio aligned to her strategic objectives.
• Created a benefits realisation plan to see projects through beyond delivery, ensuring that projected efficiencies and capabilities were fully realised and tracked to the bottom line.
• Identified key stakeholders within the business to act as project sponsors, to help evangelise the benefits of each programme and drive their adoption throughout the business.
• Communicated technical concepts to non-technical users in plain English.
• Introduced the SMT to a variety of techniques for planning and executing strategic change (Scrum and Kanban, Balanced Scorecard, Portfolio & Programme Management, Innovation Games, Sketching at Work, Systems Thinking, Design Thinking, Business Model Canvas).

Earlier Career - Kaplan International, Kaplan Aspect, Aspect Education #

• 2002-2012
• Retained through four acquisitions and changes of ownership, and regularly promoted.
• Responsible for $2M software development budget.
• Growing the software development team from 4 to 25 pax.
• Creating and monitoring the full software development life-cycle management process.
• Implemented and evangelised Agile, Scrum and related practices throughout the organisation, including to non-technical team, long before Agile was fashionable.
• Implemented a Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance framework and all supporting processes, taking the IT division from zero to full compliance in a single quarter. Maintaining a range of in-house developed business software (MS SQL Server and VB) with no prior experience after the sudden departure of the principal developer.
• Installation and support of ERP and Management Information Systems into 5 international offices across Europe.