Experience
Work Experience
Government of Canada - 3.3 years
- Junior Data Scientist
Canadian Space Agency | 01/2023 - 06/2023, 09/2023 - 04/2024
[Worked as an IT-01]
Was part of the Data and Emerging Technologies team working on various open science initiatives.- Created computer vision algorithms in Python to perform quality analysis of digitization and feature extraction on millions of ionogram films from the Alouette and ISIS satellite missions, for which my team was given the top Government of Canada data award.
- Sped up Alouette data pipeline 9x by implementing Keras Optical Character Recognition (OCR) processing on GPUs using CUDA.
- Spearheaded effort to create agency-wide bilateral MOU tracker dashboard on PowerBI.
- Contributed to both the data strategy working group and options analysis for modern data lakehouse infrastructure solutions for institutional & scientific data repositories.
- Chosen to be an official mentor and judge for the 2023 Space Apps Challenge.
- Data Scientist / Analyst
Global Affairs Canada | 05/2022 - 01/2023 Co-op
[Started as co-op student and was then promoted to an EC-04]
Made models and visualizations to enhance data-driven decision-making on various files in the Asia Pacific Branch and in support of the Centre for China Policy Research and Coherence.- Used Python to fine-tune LLMs for national security projects, using Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) for grounded question answering on diplomatic reports.
- Investigated correlations between economic exposure and UN voting trends using Python and PowerBI.
- Used R for time-series forecasting of diplomatic mission budgets.
- Student Researcher
Herzberg Astronomy & Astrophysics Research Centre | 09/2021 - 04/2022
[Part of the NSERC-CREATE New Technologies for Canadian Observatories Training Program]
Applied machine learning techniques in Python, using Keras, to astronomy data processing.- Successfully trained a convolutional neural network to select the best stars for point spread function (PSF) creation, taking only 6% the time of the existing method.
- Began development of a convolutional neural network to discover new icy minor planets past Neptune using data from the Outer Solar System Origins Survey.
- Defence Data Science Assistant
Defence Research and Development Canada | 01/2021 - 04/2021 Co-op
Center for Operational Research and Analysis.
- Developed graph-based algorithms in Python.
- Co-presented at an international hackathon, winning the best presentation award among 22 teams.
- Renewable Energy Data Research Assistant
CanmetENERGY-Ottawa | 09/2020 - 12/2020 Co-op
Analyzed Remote Community Renewable Energy to bring renewable energy to Canadian northern communities.
- Automated historical meteorological simulations in Python to model renewable energy generation and GHG reductions for ~200 off-grid communities.
- Generated Canada-wide capacity and cost estimates to transition communities off diesel.
- Created an interactive visualization dashboard using Tableau (see dashboard here).
TRIUMF: Canada’s Particle Accelerator Center - 1.4 years
- Machine Learning Architect Student
Particle Physics Group | 05/2023 - 01/2023, 05/2024 - 09/2024
Joined Antihydrogen Laser PHysics Apparatus (ALPHA), the leading antimatter collaboration at CERN as part of the Azuma Fellowship.
- Designed and trained PointNet-like models in PyTorch to do regression to reconstruct the vertical position of antimatter annihilation events in the ALPHA-g detector based on Monte Carlo simulations, resulting in a model that is able to reconstruct this position to a precision twice as good as the conventional method and near-zero bias (on simulation).
- Participated in shift work for the ALPHA-2 experiment for 2 months which largely involved running physics experiments from the control room and doing real-time data analysis at CERN.
- Attended the CERN Summer Student Lecture Programme.
- Continued part-time in the fall to work on a similar project for T2K, providing my first introduction to more high-performance computing using multi-GPU training on our national compute cluster.
- Photosensor Detector Researcher
Particle Physics Group | 01/2020 - 04/2020 Co-op
Contributed to detector development for Hyper-Kamiokande, a next-generation neutrino observatory.
- Prototyped a novel multi-PMT neutrino photosensor detector via lab assembly, SolidWorks design, 3D printing, and scanning.
- Analyzed and visualized data using Python and C++ to determine detector efficiency.
University of Waterloo - 2.3 years
- Various Roles
University Housing & Athletics | 09/2018 - 12/2024 (w/ breaks)
When attending school in-person, I worked various roles from Residence Ambassador, Climbing Wall Staff, and Residence Don. As a don, I lived in residence at a small college and engaged in various tasks to help make students' university experience as good as possible.
- Was directly responsible for the 19 students on my floor and we won the floor of the year award.
- Patrolled the entire college and responded to emergencies (medical, mental health, etc.) when on duty.
- Provided support to students and resolved conflicts among residents.
- Planned residence-wide events and captained the college intramural team.
MDA Space - 4 months
- Robotics & Space Operations Intern
Guidance, Navigation, and Controls Engineering | 09/2021 - 12/2021 Co-op
Worked on artificial intelligence algorithms for Canadarm2 and potentially Canadarm3.
- Optimized anomaly detection and fault diagnosis programs using Python and Keras, trained on MATLAB simulations and Canadarm2 flight data.
Notes
click to expand
- Most of this work experience was gained through the University of Waterloo co-op program, where we would alternate between school and work each 4 months throughout our degree and were encouraged to try new things. This led to me doing placements at the Government of Canada, TRIUMF, and MDA.
- You can learn more about my co-op work experiences through an article the University of Waterloo co-op program wrote about me.
- Pretty much all of my technical roles heavily involved Python programming, version control with git (e.g. GitHub, GitLab, and both GUIs and command line tools), as well as working in Linux-like systems.
- I then also worked for my University directly during most of my in-person school terms.
- Also note that most of my non-co-op term work has been part-time as I was juggling classes at the same time, and for my role at the Canadian Space Agency I took a couple of months off in the summer to pursue research abroad at CERN.
Volunteer Experience
University of Waterloo Data Science Club - 1.6 years
- Host & Editor
Podcast Team | 01/2024 - 09/2024
Listen to our podcast, The Data Den, almost everywhere you find podcasts including Spotify.
- Edited podcasts with guests from OpenAI and Weights & Biases.
- Hosted podcasts with guests from Cohere and Google DeepMind.
- Reading Group Lead
Education Team | 01/2023 - 04/2024
Learned loads about data science by helping to make the topics more accessible to other students.
SEDS-Canada - 2.3 years
- Assistant Project Manager
Canadian Stratospheric Balloon Experiment Design Challenge | 11/2021 - 01/2024
Assisting with logistics for students to fly experiment payloads on high-altitude balloons.
- Provided feedback for proposals and design reviews and answered applicant questions live.
- Organized and hosted live post-flight student presentations.
- Was liaison between student teams and the Canadian Space Agency.
- Led revamping of application process to diversify and increase number of applicant teams to record level.
