Meet Qiao, our rocket scientist.

Meet Qiao — our Senior Data Scientist. Qiao is currently working as a Data Scientist at savedroid. Before joining savedroid, he was a Post Doctoral researcher at the Institute for Transport Planning and Systems inETH Zurich, Switzerland. He got his PhD in Traffic Engineering from ETH Zurich in 2016.His interests include sensitivity analysis,microscopic simulations, as well as machine learning algorithms. He has first authored a number of scientific publications, especially in the area of sensitivity analysis and uncertainty quantification. He is also the recipient of several awards in his academic life, including one very prestigious Chinese Government Award.

Hi Qiao!

• What do you do at savedroid?
• I’m the senior Data Scientist. Me and my team deal with big data on daily basis to implement some cool stuff like AI within the crypto app. My team is also responsible for building portfolio for our crypto currencies which helps users to save money.
• Can you describe your journey to savedroid?
• Before joining savedroid I was staying in academia. For most of my life I was working at University. I did my PhD in Switzerland, then my family moved to Frankfurt. Actually, my wife moved to Frankfurt and I’ve decided to join her. I thought it would be interesting to do finally something different, so I started to look for a Data Scientist job here. I had already some experience with Machine Learning, Statistics and Programming. In 2017 I applied for a Data Scientist position at savedroid and luckily, I got in. We have at the moment 3 people in our Data Science Team but it’s very productive and multicultural group.
• Can you tell us more about your team?
• We have Danko and Gautam in our team. Danko is the lead, while Gautam is on the same position as me — Senior Data Scientist. We do a lot of programming and discussing during the day *laughs*.
• Can you please share some insights about what you are guys working on right now, just as you were to explain this to a small kid?
• As a PhD it’s usually hard to explain stuff in a very simple way. Basically, we have this crypto app and we want to have portfolio consisting of different crypto currencies. Some currencies jump a lot and they also drop a lot, they are not stable. Some coins are more stable, but they don’t give you a good return. Our job is to ensure that the users have well balanced portfolio.
• What advantage our AI has over other similar apps available on the market?
• It’s special because the algorithm does not come from any book. It was fully developed and programmed by us. It has nothing to do with traditional financial methods. Of course, we follow some general rules, but crypto market is very different from traditional financial market. We cannot follow whatever somebody else has earlier invented because simply it doesn’t apply, and it won’t work. We’ve been observing the performance of our AI for quite some time already and it’s very smart. Right before the jump in the Bitcoin price, our AI made suggestions to invest in it. At the moment we are very proud of it and I don’t think there’s any other company offering such solutions.

• Can you tell me in your own words what are cryptocurrencies and why users should be interested in this asset class?
• I’m not a crypto expert but from where I’m standing, it’s something completely different from what we’ve been using as a means of transferring value until now. It has a digital form on the blockchain, and you don’t need a purse to store it. The wallets are being created also on blockchain in an encrypted sequence of letter and numbers. To access the wallet and make transactions, you need to provide a secret key. Not only it’s safe but also fully anonymous, nobody knows to whom the wallet belongs to. It’s also not controlled by any government, so if any of those go bankrupt, your assets will not be affected. As long as we will have internet, which could be forever, your assets will be there, independent of any bank.
• Are you saying that it’s safer to hold your assets only in crypto?
• Not exactly, because at the moment the market of crypto is very volatile, which means the price can go up or down very quickly. Today you invest 100$, tomorrow it could become 200$, and the day after it might be only 50$. It’s quite hard to predict. However, I’d expect that when there are more and more crypto users, this business will grow and it will make the prices more stable. And then it will be a very good alternative to the fiat money like Dollar or Euro etc.
• Why the crypto market is so unstable, what do you think?
• For example, there are people who manipulate the market. They spread rumors that a particular crypto soon will disappear. The price immediately goes down, they purchase a lot of crypto in that moment and later when the market recovers, they sell it for a very high price. This way they earn a lot of money. Let’s assume that in the future we’ll have more regulations concerning crypto, hopefully then, this behavior will disappear, and the prices will be stable.
• What’s your favorite thing about savedroid?
• You never know what’s coming up for the next months and what we will be working on. A lot of challenges and things you don’t expect. Last year we were fully concentrated on making AI work perfectly and nowadays we work together with the marketing team. We also try to optimize the Smooves and create a cool dashboard to track carefully user behavior and learn from it. It’s a lot of digging for information in data. It never crossed my mind that I’d be doing such things at savedroid. It’s very challenging but also it broadens my horizons. Yet, I strongly believe we all should leave our comfort zones doing something extraordinary.
• Do you consider yourself a creative person?
• Yes, of course. Now I admit this faster. Nevertheless, Data Science team does not come from financial world and there’s a lot we still need to learn and to figure out. In order to do it, you need to be creative and open-minded to solve any new problem you face.E

• Is this the first company where you can work with crypto currencies?
• Yes, it’s actually the first company I’ve ever worked in because like I said before, I came here straight after academia life. In academia you spent a lot of time in research and writing papers, but the practical part is sometimes missing, so now I finally have the opportunity to make my ideas become a reality.
• What do you do in your free time?
• In my free time I do a lot of sport, like swimming.
• Originally you come from China, how old were you when you moved to Europe?
• I moved out from China in 2008, I was 27 years old at that time and it seems like I’ve been living in Europe more than 10 years now. I’ve been studying in Munich, then in Zurich I did my PhD and afterwards I moved to Frankfurt and here we are now.
• Why you’ve decided to move to Europe in the first place?
• That’s actually very funny story. So, my favorite soccer team is FC Bayern München. I was still in my 20s, so I thought to myself it’s now or never to explore the world and learn something more about other cultures. I also knew, I want to pursue my academic career. I’ve been thinking for quite some time where to go and then I realized, ok it’s actually very simple. My favorite team is from Munich, so I’ll go there. I applied for the Technical University Munich and I got in for the Master Programm.
• Was it a shock for you to move to a totally different culture?
• I definitely like it, otherwise I wouldn’t stay here so long. In China nowadays there isn’t a very clear boundary between life and work, and young people needs to work for long hours and there are pressures from different angles. In Germany it’s a little bit different, at work you need to fully, 100% concentrate on your work but afterwards you can really enjoy time with your family.
• What’s your favorite crypto?
• Definitely — Bitcoin!
• If you weren’t a Data Scientist, what would you do?
• I’d like to teach Kids math.
• Thank you Qiao for the interview!
• Thanks!

Your savedroid Team, cheers!