Cohort 7 Student Spotlight: Meet Lance
Lance Fernando joined the MSDS program directly from the BS in Data Science Program at USF. Continue reading to learn more about his passion for music and how he wants to apply data science after graduation!
What were you doing before you came to the MSDS program?
I did my undergrad at USF in the BS in Data Science Program, which sort of leads into this master’s program. While there, I was a research assistant and also had an internship, both of which were in the realm of data visualization. My projects were things like assessing visual aesthetics and how those choices can affect interpretations of visualization and their usability, and trying to build an automatically generated dashboard from a data set.
What started your interest in Data Science?
Originally, I came in as a computer science major and then I found out about the data science program and switched into it. Growing up, I played a lot of music. I was a part of this jazz band that played Traditional Dixieland jazz, so I played trumpet, guitar, and a banjo, and a lot of what you do in jazz is improv. You look at a lead sheet that has the melody and the chord structure, but a lot of the choices that you make when you’re playing live are improvised. I was interested in learning how people quantify improv, because it could seem random. That question put me down a rabbit hole of using machine learning to make music, and how people are quantifying jazz improv using mathematics and machine learning. That opened me up to the whole universe of data science itself — not just machine learning, but things like data visualization.
What do you think you want to pursue after your degree?
I think generating music with machine learning is really cool, but I think there is so much you can do with data science in general. I grew up in a low income family so that makes me want to do things that help serve those that are socioeconomically disadvantaged, and there is a lot of data there that we can use to help alleviate those kinds of disadvantages. In the long run, I want to work for an organization that does exactly that, using data.
What are you most excited for this year?
I’m really excited to see what the professors dress as for Halloween and to actually get my feet wet with the practicum experience.
Have you done anything cool in SF?
Well, I really like music, so seeing a lot of random music events that are always happening in the city. There is a free music day in a couple of weeks where a bunch of random ensembles from jazz to classical, etc. I also really like riding bicycles and building road bikes, so riding in the city is one of my favorite pastimes. It is surprisingly safe because of the SF Bicycle Coalition advocates.
