About

Experienced data scientist with background in risk, leasing, retail, and ML. Graduate of Rice University and UT Austin. Currently working at The Aaron's Company Inc.

I developed an unsupervised ML model that significantly improved the quality control process of silicon wafer manufacturing. Additionally, I created an interactive R Shiny application that allowed engineers to run the model, configure thresholds, and visualize key metrics. The application was deployed internally and used daily by many engineers at the company.

• Pictures: SBL Motor 1 , SBL Motor 2

I interned with the Visual Analytics development team at SAS Institute for two summers, where I worked as a developer on SAS Visual Statistics. During my time, I resolved critical defects and contributed to new feature development for the front-end.

• Poster: SAS Internship

I am a Master of Computer Science student at Rice with specialization in Data Science. In Spring 2021, I am a teaching assistant for COMP 680: Statistics and Data Science course. Also, I'm part of Ray Simar's research project on COVID data (hsmap.rice.edu).

• Coursework: machine learning, deep learning, databases, data visualization, object-oriented programming, cloud computing, parallel computing, probabilistic algorithms, computational finance, and data science consulting.
  
  

• Math/Statistics: Probability, Discrete Math, Differential Equations, Linear Algebra, Numerical Analysis, Numerical Methods II, Partial Differential Equations, Real Analysis, Complex Variables, Multivariate Models, Applied Statistics, Mathematical Statistics, Stochastic Processes, Applied Regression Analysis.
  
  
• Computer Science: Intro to Programming, Software Design, Databases, Mobile Computing, Scientific Computing, Scientific and Technical Computing, User Experience Design.
  
  

• I was a data science consultant in the D2K Lab at Rice where we met with clients, gave them data science recommendations, and wrote a report for them. Most of the clients came from the Texas Medical Center, energy companies, or are other students at Rice.
  
  Sample report on traffic tickets, List of clients and their topics
  
  
• I worked in a team with 5 other students in the graduate object oriented programming class to develop a chat application and pac-man game in a short period of time. We used different design patterns we learned in the class like the command design pattern. We worked really well together (even though it was all virtual) and it was a fun experience.
  
  Code and pictures
  
  Chat App (may take few seconds for website to load)
  
  Pac-Man App (may take few seconds for website to load). There's 2 levels, see if you can beat it!
  
  
• These are pictures of work I did in a Data Visualization class where we used Python, Matplotlib, ggplot, Pandas, and NLTK extensively. The code is in a separate private repo.
  
  Data Visualization Projects
  
  
• In a database implementation course, we coded a database from scratch in Java. The hardest part was the B+ tree indexing.
  
  Code
  
  

• My favorite sport is soccer. I'm best at playing as a center midfielder and my strength is creating unconventional passes.
  
  
• I like music by Jason Reeves and Ryan Cabrera.
  
  

• howardjlan@outlook.com
• (832) 600-7772