#DIGITALTRADIES: WHEN THE LOVE OF SPORTS TAKES YOU TO THE WORLD OF DATA SCIENCE - MEET ANDREW KUO
Welcome to the sixth episode of #DigitalTradies!
In this series, we catch up with some very awesome people in the Lendlease Digital family (we call “Digital Tradies”) to find out what they do and what they’re working on right now, with Podium.
We spoke with Andrew Kuo (on his birthday! Hip hip hooray!). Andrew is a self-confessed Sports Nerd and Senior Data Scientist at Lendlease Digital.
Tell us about yourself
I'm a Data Scientist. I look at lots of property and construction data. I try to bring it all together, make predictions and build machine learning models. I’m a big big big sports nerd, so that’s probably one of the things that got me into Data Science. (I wondered... how can someone get better at predicting the outcomes of matches?)
What are you currently working on?
I’ve been working on a product called Podium Property Insights. I’m building models to look at the relationship between the weather and the external factors of a building. For example, weather and occupancy and how that affects electricity consumption and other forms of energy consumption in the building. So, ultimately trying to get better at optimising the way that we operate buildings – making them a little bit smarter.
What inspires you to log in every day?
The biggest thing is the culture. We have an awesome team. Everyone is really smart so we get to have these very nerdy and challenging conversations. They're also very nice. And in terms of the work itself, it’s a lot of very new and cutting-edge stuff which means I get to do some pretty challenging problem solving (which is the main thing I like about being a Data Scientist).
Finally, what is your spirit animal?
Octopus! They seem to be very inquisitive. They like problem solving. I’ve seen them open jars and thing like that before – and I can also open jars. Octopuses (like Paul the Octopus) are good at predicting things – and as a Data Scientist, I also need to be good at predicting things.