Class of 2017

Subi Zhang, Data Science Consultant at Deloitte

"My passion is to understand and empower business through data science approaches."

Previous Degree: Bachelor of Management, Beijing Forestry University
Prior Experience: Xiaomi, Publicis Media
Program: MDS Vancouver, Class of 2017

Two years ago, I decided to make a bold career change moving from human resources into data analysis. I made it happen through the UBC MDS program. MDS helped me gain the knowledge and skill sets required as a data science professional. The final capstone project was amazing: I obtained hands-on industrial experience on real-world data science problems in a collaborative manner. As an international student, I also felt MDS provided an excellent immersive environment that greatly improved my English in a short period of time.

About Subi Zhang

Subi is a self-motivated learner who keeps extending her career through her curiosity for business and technology. She started her career as a technical recruiter at Xiaomi supporting the advertising algorithm team, where she got in-depth exposure to multiple business applications in machine learning. This peaked her interest in data science and she took a job as a data analyst in Publicis Media where she helped advertising clients make informed decisions. She is currently employed as a Data Science Consultant at Deloitte in Toronto, Ontario.

Nasim Taba, Data Scientist at BC Stats

"I am excited to participate fully in the sweeping changes in data science, and the ideal next step is to use my MDS knowledge for social good. I am interested in exploring factors that contribute to youth homelessness; using hard data to shed light on social patterns may help alleviate problems of teenagers and their families."

Previous Degree: Master of Management Sciences, University of Waterloo
Prior Experience: Deloitte
Program: MDS Vancouver, Class of 2017

In the MDS program, I learned to extract and analyze data from both unstructured and structured forms and communicate the findings to enable organizations to make informed decisions based on data. We were well trained in Python, R, and SQL. Projects included working with both structured and non-structured data; data cleaning and imputation; applying cleaned data to various machine learning models to provide multivariate assessments, classification and prediction; visualizing data using Matplotlib, Shiny app and ggplot.

About Nasim Taba

Nasim Taba has more than 4 years of management consulting experience gained through her career at Deloitte IT Consulting. With experience in implementing small and large scale IT project implementations for Fortune 500 and 1000 companies, Nasim has experience working throughout the entire project lifecycle. From managing JAD sessions with stakeholders, developing functional design and specifications to quality and transformation requirements to developing test cases for highly complex projects, she has also simultaneously managed project staff and resources to ensure all milestones are delivered on time and within budget.

Nada Salem, Data Scientist at Spotify

"My goal is to empower management to make better and more informed data driven decisions for the organization."

Previous Degree: Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, Carnegie Mellon University
Prior Experience: EY
Program: MDS Vancouver, Class of 2017

My background as a management consultant as well as my MDS degree have made me aware of the value a data scientist can drive from large amounts of information already present inside an institution. This program has allowed me to amass a large amount of skills that extend from data wrangling and visualization to training machine learning models and algorithms.

About Nada Salem

Nada has 2 years of experience as a management consultant and has worked on solving business problems through structured and data-based analyses to improve client performance. Prior to being a consultant, Nada completed a degree in business administration with a focus on marketing analytics. With a passion in Behavioral Economics, Nada’s thesis analyzed and classified consumer risk-taking behavior using a wide range of features collected from various data sources. After graduating from the MDS program, Nada worked as a data scientist with Microsoft and is now currently working as a data science with Spotify in New York City.

Kai He, Data Scientist at BGC Engineering

"My capstone project involved Natural Language Processing using topic modelling tools, where I learned about not only model and feature selection, but also collaboration, exploratory data analysis process, and much more."

Previous Degree: Bachelor of Science, University of British Columbia
Prior Experience: University of British Columbia, Bioinformatics Laboratory
Program: MDS Vancouver, Class of 2017

I realized early on in my undergraduate studies that I also have a strong interest in mathematics and computer science. I took many math and algorithm electives while studying Life Sciences, and decided that I'd like to learn more about how to process large amount of raw data, build practical statistical models, and derive insightful and actionable solutions. That's exactly what I learned in this intense, accelerated program. I was trained in data wrangling, machine learning as well as communicating my ideas and insights as a data scientist.

About Kai He

Kai has worked in multiple Bioinformatics labs as a data analyst/research assistant. He is currently a Data Scientist at BGC Engineering, where he is applying machine learning techniques to real industrial problems in the field of geoengineering. He believes that this is a new domain with a large amount of data in all forms, such as time series, unstructured text, images, and even 50-year-old paper maps with coffee stains on them. He is learning more everyday and is very excited to find new ways of utilizing all the historical data.

Rodrigo Coronado, Director for Advanced Analytics at Avande

"MDS gave me a great insight into the data science value chain, and provided me with a deep understanding of algorithms, statistical models and development practices."

Previous Degree: Bachelor of Management Information Systems, Technologico de Monterrey
Prior Experience: Hewlett Packard, Microsoft
Program: MDS Vancouver, Class of 2017

With my background in business and global enterprises, combined with the data science experience I gained in MDS, I’m eager to pursue a strategic role translating the benefits of data science into business value. I’m passionate about how enterprises and society are leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning—from retailers using AI bots, warehouses powered on AI robots, utility companies forecasting energy demand, hospitals automating triage processes, and researchers predicting heart attacks. I get excited thinking about the possibilities of applying my skills to drive change in industry and in the world.

About Rodrigo Coronado

Prior to completing the UBC Master of Data Science program, Rodrigo earned a degree in management information systems. He has a wide range of experience leading delivery teams and international projects and has worked with Hewlett Packard and Microsoft for 18 years in a diverse set of positions in business development, project management, enterprise applications, and global enterprise architecture practices. Rodrigo currently works as the Director of Advanced Analytics for Avanade in Calgary, Alberta.

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