Idan Morad - a new Data Scientist in PlayBuzz
Idan Morad - a new Data Scientist in PlayBuzz
Learn about me and my work in data science in the last few years, just before I start my job at PlayBuzz.
Learn about me and my work in data science in the last few years, just before I start my job at PlayBuzz.
Who Am I and Where Do I come from?
So originally I'm from Kfar-Saba, which is a small town north from Tel Aviv, but not that far from it. I studied physics and computer science in high school. During those times teachers moved from Pascal to C as a main programming language, so in my school we were the first class to learn C. Little that they knew, that the following year Java will be all the rage and teaching will move to that. We also leaned HTML and JavaScript.
After I graduated high-school, and before I enlisted to the army, I worked for a half a year at a small company named 2win-solutions. There I participated in pre and post-selling process and learned how to program an Adobe digital form. The company mainly re-digitise old and static insurance forms to interactive and self-filled ones.
Army
In the army I served in the Manpower Directorate and started as a technical supporter by phone. As time progressed a new HR system was introduced to the force and I found myself designing more and more information system components and processes. So In a way, you can say that the army drove me to find my major study in the university.
Data Scientist (n.): Person who know statistics better than a software engineer and software engineering better than a statistician.
Josh Wills
3rd May 2012
Education
So when I finished my service I went to Be'er Sheva, and decided to study information system engineering, and for short ISE. In my third year of the Bachelor degree I was excepted to M.Sc program via a special direct track, And under the guidance of Dr. Asaf Shabtai, I was introduced to Data Science and Cyber Security.
Asaf, as well as being my mentor, also hired me to work full time during my Masters degree to work in Deutsche Telecom Innovation labs.
Thesis
As mentioned, at Deutsche data science is being used to create cyber security solutions. My thesis was called "Long Term, Low Amplitude Anomaly Detection for Detecting Insider Threat". There research was mainly on anomaly detection, as the name imply, and was financed by the Israeli Ministry of Science and Technology.
First Job
During the research Asaf and I, and several more doctors from ISE department, developed a new algorithm that analysed network traffic logs and output a profiles of groups of users and resources that the users used. In my work I utilized the Weka platform using Java, and created scripts for pre and post processing using R code.
GICI
So after Be'er Sheva, I started to work in Gartner Innovation Center (GICI for short) and moved to the big city - Tel Aviv. In GICI I familiarised with Data Science in NLP (Natural Language Processing). There I stoped working alone as researcher, as I did in Be'er Sheva, and started to participate in a full project life cycle, including production level implementation and integration. I used Java and Python mainly. I started also to go to meetups and learn about the wide range of problems that data science tries to solve.
... and beyond
I moved to Rishon LeZion half a year ago, and started a more suburban life. Today I started a new job in PlayBuzz and as you can read I'm trying the new platform and I'm very excited to be a part and contribute.
Hobbies, Passions etc.
The first thing you can tell on me is that I'm a geek:
- I walk with branded t-shirts of all my favorite movies, Mostly of Star-Wars!
- I collect action figures (especially Funko-Pops), and I like to do puzzles and build lego sets.
- I familiarise with most comics/shows/movies trivia.
- I watch most of related comics TV shows, like: Arrow, Flash, all the Netflix-Marvel shows, Sherlock, Dr. Who.
- I have comics collection, which I usually buy at conventions.
So you can come and Hi, ask me about data science or pop-culture, and you can always find me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/idanmorad
Things to remember about me ;-)