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Neal D

- Research Program Mentor

MS at University of Wisconsin - Madison

Expertise

Machine Learning, Data Science and Analytics, Data Structures and Algorithms, People Management, Computer Vision

Bio

Most simply, I am passionate about data analytics and how we can extract value from data. I worked closely as a consultant with healthcare organizations creating metrics for population health for physicians and patients. Over the past couple of years, I've taken that passion in a more technical direction as a machine learning engineer, creating data models in the energy and healthcare spaces. I especially enjoyed learning about techniques in natural language processing and computer vision. Outside of the classroom and workplace, I really enjoy playing board games such as Settlers of Catan and Dominion. I've also tried to spend as much time as I can outdoors. I especially enjoy biking, hiking, and playing tennis.

Project ideas

Project ideas are meant to help inspire student thinking about their own project. Students are in the driver seat of their research and are free to use any or none of the ideas shared by their mentors.

Housing Price Prediction

The goal of this project would be to use statistical machine learning techniques to predict the selling price of a new home using existing datasets such as the Boston House Prices dataset. Students would perform exploratory data analysis in Python and learn about a few different regression techniques to predict unknown house prices. We would also cover basic uncertainty quantification so we have a good idea of how precise our predictions really are.

Image Classification (handwritten digits or tumor classification)

Using labeled images, we will create a basic neural network model to classify images. Two examples of such problems that can be solved would be classification of handwritten digits (0-9) and breast cancer tumor classification (benign vs malignant). Various techniques (e.g. multi-layer perceptron and convolutional neural network) will be used and their performance relative to one another will be compared and contrasted.

Coding skills

python, Java, shell

Teaching experience

I was both a mentor and a manager for new hires in my previous industry role as a healthcare consultant.

Credentials

Work experience

Epic Systems (2014 - 2020)
Technical Problem Solver
Epic Systems (2018 - 2020)
Team Leader
Beyond Limits (2021 - Current)
Machine Learning Engineer

Education

California Institute of Technology (CalTech)
BS Bachelor of Science (2014)
Bioengineering
University of Wisconsin - Madison
MS Master of Science
Computer Science

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