Hi, I'm Derek!

Data Scientist | Problem Solver | Tinkerer

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About Me

I am a Data Scientist with a B.S. in Pure Mathematics and an M.S. in Data Analytics Engineering. My work is centered on bridging the gap between complex datasets and practical tools that help teams make better decisions. I view data challenges through a mathematical lens, focusing on statistical rigor and the development of reliable, scalable pipelines.

What I Do

In my current role, I design and deploy production-grade LLM-powered systems that help users navigate multi-billion record datasets by translating natural language into structured search queries. I also own scalable Python ETL pipelines that reduce data delivery time by 93% and cloud costs by 15% for millions of records on a custom workflow manager platform. This work involves:

• Pipeline Engineering: Architecting transformation layers for complex data types to ensure high-fidelity staging for seamless model training and deployment.
• System Visibility: Building real-time monitoring dashboards using the ELK Stack and Grafana to track operational metrics across hundreds of servers.
• Reliability: Implementing CI/CD pipelines via Jenkins to ensure that analytical systems are reproducible and perform consistently.

My Foundation

Prior to my current role, I served as a Junior Mathematician and Data Scientist. During this time, I bridged the gap between theory and performance by benchmarking ML models against statistical baselines to validate real-world improvements. I modernized legacy analytics into interactive web dashboards, enabling stakeholders to derive insights independently. In high-stakes cyber analytics, I engineered models that achieved a 10% gain in accuracy and a 50% increase in coverage. I applied this same rigor to Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), using performance metrics and visualizations to drive higher-quality synthetic data generation.

I am an AWS Certified Developer and proficient in a technical stack that includes:

• Python,
• SQL,
• PyTorch,
• scikit-learn,
• the ELK stack,
• Apache Airflow, and
• Dagster

Beyond the Screen

In my free time, I am still a tinkerer and a builder at heart. You will usually find me learning a new song on the piano, a practice that has grounded my approach to technical problem-solving since childhood. I also thrive on challenges that require long-term endurance, whether I am training for a marathon or navigating a 10+ mile scenic hiking trail. This same drive to find my way through unfamiliar terrain fuels my passion for travel; to me, exploring a new culture is much like exploring a new dataset—it is an opportunity to learn, adapt, and find clarity in a new environment.