Owen Boberg

Astro PhD turned Data Scientist/Engineer with experience in scientific software development, data pipelines, and machine learning across
civic tech, startups, and academia.

Python and SQL are my languages of choice when unravelling the mysteries of the universe, understanding feature usage across a recently launched product, or tracking cohort performance across longitudinal datasets.

I also like to apply the techniques I’ve learned professionally to try to predict how well (or poorly) the Chicago Cubs might perform this year and understand the complexities of baseball.

Resume

Experience

Principal Data Engineer - Mandolin Software
Aug 2021 - April 2023
  • Leading the design and maintenance of Snowflake data and machine learning pipelines to surface near real-time data for customer facing applications and internal business intelligence reports/dashboards in both Looker and Salesforce.
  • Producing and presenting data-driven recommendations to the leadership team on how to capture customer adoption and retention of new products/features through Looker reports and detailed analysis performed with SQL and Python.
  • Developing novel/intelligent customer segmentation using machine learning and statistical techniques written in Python and SQL to understand customer purchase and music artist interactions in order to drive impactful marketing campaigns and grow artist fanbases.
  • Performing customer entity resolution by writing Python, Javascript, and SQL stored procedures and user defined functions to dynamically process e-commerce, marketing, and general ticketing/audience data files from diverse external sources.
  • Daily collaboration and deployment with front/back end engineers using GitHub to create data models that support data intensive applications.
  • Supporting General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) requests to help ensure company compliance and maintain customer privacy.
  • Responsible for Snowflake administrative tasks including: database model designs, warehouse resource allocation and monitoring, user access, and role creation.
  • Manage and mentor the business analyst team in order to determine project priority and improve skills in SQL, Python, and presentations to stakeholders.
  • Educate and enable people across the company to effectively use data in dashboards though a monthly data guild meeting.
  • Reduce Snowflake credit usage/cost by optimizing database design, SQL efficiency, and resource management to increase performance while meeting budget constraints.
Lead Data Scientist - Indiana Management Performance Hub
Oct 2018 - Aug 2021
Featured Link
  • Led data science initiatives across state agencies including: Teacher compensation, Management of the opioid crisis, School corporation spending and fund allocation, the analysis of the State’s education and workforce development efforts to understand program efficacy in order to improve outcomes for Hoosiers.
  • Led the design and operations of the data system components in the State of Indiana’s Enhanced Research Environment (ERE), which was awarded an Emerging and Innovative Technologies award from the National Association of State Chief Information Officers.
  • Supported data pipeline and architecture development and management for statewide data science projects, interfaced with external agencies (customers) to support their work, including, e.g., analysis of Covid-19 data for development of the state’s pandemic response efforts.
  • Developed custom longitudinal datasets with SQL to fulfill data requests from outside researchers (customers) and other agencies to complete analysis on behalf of the state.
  • Created and maintained public/internal facing Tableau dashboards using Python, SQL, and Tableau Prep.
  • Wrote and maintained code (R, Python, SQL) and development standards for agency employees and outside vendors collaborating on projects using Azure DevOps and GitHub repositories.
  • Technical lead of the cross functional data product team comprised of data management, business intelligence and data science while managing one direct report.
Postdoctoral Researcher, Simulations Team - Data Intensive Research in Astrophysics and Cosmology Institute
June 2017 - Oct 2018
Featured Link
  • Developed open source software to visualize and optimize telescope observing strategies over 10 years of simulations.
  • Containerized software in Docker to increase the accessibility of a large, collaborative code base for a globally distributed scientific community.
  • Acted as technical liaison to the astronomical community to distribute results of simulations and coordinate feedback to further improve large scale surveys.
  • Led multi-day Python-based workshops to train the community on how to use simulation software and contribute their ideas to the project through code.
Graduate Research Assistant and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow - Indiana University Department of Astronomy
Aug 2012 - Aug 2017
  • Co-developed an open source astronomical image processing pipeline in Python: odi-tools.
  • Co-developed a novel parallelizable and scalable k-means machine learning algorithm for classification of stars.
  • Applied machine learning and modeling (e.g Gaussian Mixture Models) techniques to analyze stellar cluster characteristics.

Education

2012 - 2017
Ph.D. Astronomy
Indiana University, Bloomington
Graduate Minor in Scientific Computing
2011 - 2012
Fulbright Fellowship
Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, La Serena, Chile
2005 - 2010
Bachelor of Science in Physics
New Mexico State University, Las Cruces

Undergraduate Minors

  • Applied Mathematics
  • Chemistry

Projects

MLB Pitch Network
Python Tableau
MLB Pitch Network
Mapping pitch counts, stats, and movements
Dashboard
MLB Pitch Clusters
Python Jupyter Clustering
MLB Pitch Clusters
Testing clustering techniques to classify pitch types
Jupyter Notebook
MPH Data Data and Introduction to the ERE
Civic Tech Tutorial
MPH Data Data and Introduction to the ERE
Introduction to the Management Performance Hub Enhance Research Environment.
Youtube Video
LSST cadence hackathon
Docker Astronomy Community Outreach Tutorial
LSST cadence hackathon
Invited speaker at week long workshop hosted by the Flat Iron Institute
Hackathon website
LSST special programs workshop (Palermo, Italy)
Docker Astronomy Community Outreach Tutorial
LSST special programs workshop (Palermo, Italy)
Invited speaker by the INAF.
Youtube Video

Achievements

Indiana TechPoint Tech 25 Class of 2021
The Tech 25 Awards honor a prestigious selection of twenty-five individuals who are critical and exceptional performers helping to grow Indiana’s tech and tech-enabled companies, but who—not being the CEO or other top executive—don’t get celebrated publicly as often.
State Health Commissioner Award for Excellence in Public Health (2020)
For outstanding contributions in promoting protecting and providing for the health of the people in Indiana.
Distinguished Service Award, Department of Astronomy, Indiana University (2017)
Hollis and Grete Johnson Graduate Research Prize for Excellence in Graduate Student Research, Indiana University (2017)
Joseph and Frances Morgan Swain Fellowship, Indiana University (2016)
National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (2013 - 2016)
Fulbright Fellowship to La Serena,Chile (2011)