Launching launches
This week two interns joined our SA & NL team, they will be working on the internal launch projects FrozenBytes (a computer vision MVP) and Caffeine Connect (a natural language processing prototype). Welcome to the team Thato and Eva!
Let’s introduce them!
About Eva
Born and raised in Bucharest, Romania, Eva moved to Germany at the age of 18 to study Biochemistry. After one semester, realizing this subject is unsuited for her she then moved to the Netherlands after discovering they offer the novel bachelor program Data Science (then the first one in Europe), offered by Eindhoven University of Technology and Tilburg University. There she was part of the first board of the newly formed data science association D.S.A. Pattern (which now spreads over 3 cities, 2 universities and has over 400 members). She was also active in organizing the first datathon for D.S.A. Pattern members, in collaboration with 510 Red Cross.
Her bachelor thesis was done in collaboration with Statistics Netherlands on the topic of detecting innovative companies in the country based on the text on their website.
Now Eva is in her first year of the MSC Data Science & Entrepreneurship, also jointly offered by both TU/e and TiU. Eva is passionate about understanding the math behind ML algorithms — she took several advanced mathematics and statistics courses and has also been a Data Statistics tutor last year. She also likes to keep up to date with research in the field, having participated as an MC at the Open Data Science Conference in London last year.
Eva is fond of learning foreign languages, being fluent in English and German and currently busy improving her Dutch and learning Chinese. She enjoys travelling (hopefully at some point also to South Africa), art, reading, skiing and kite surfing.
About Thato
Thato was born and raised in the Atteridgeville township of Pretoria and has completed schooling in Johannesburg. He moved down to Cape Town where he studied an undergraduate degree in Mathematical Sciences majoring in Applied Mathematics and Biomathematics and minored in Economics at Stellenbosch University. He is currently a part-time postgraduate honours student in Applied Mathematics and has completed the “IBM Data Science Professional Certificate” along with some machine learning courses through Coursera. Thato believes in understanding theoretical concepts of a subject before tackling any of its’ problems and so you will often find him researching and reading up on the mathematical background of various machine learning models and applying these algorithms to online community projects. Thato was part of the Stellenbosch University Choir which has been rated as the best amateur choir in the world since 2012 and considers music to be up there at the top along with his passion for data science and machine learning. He likes to sing with friends, hike and workout in his spare time.
