Adrian Lam

I was born in Los Angeles, but my family moved back to Hong Kong when I was 4 and I have lived there throughout my high school years.  I came back to the US for college in 2011, attending Carnegie Mellon University for freshman year, and transferring to Northwestern University for the remainder of college.  During my junior year, I took 6 months off to work for United Airlines, in their Continuous Improvement and Enterprise Optimization division, working on a python simulation coding project.  After completing my industrial engineering degree, I returned to United to work in their Finance, Resource Planning division.  Over 2 years, I produced manpower forecasts and budgeting for 3 major United hubs - SFO, DEN and IAH, assisted hub leaders with hiring plans and optimized staffing rosters to minimize costs.  

In April this year, I changed roles within United Airlines to their Digital Marketing division, where I focus on our personalization and machine learning products.  With the immense customer base that United has, we can do a much better job at improving the customers' overall experience based on their preference, as well as their online interaction with our website.  Seeing how big a role data plays in optimizing customers' impressions, as well as the investments that companies are willing to make in machine learning, has ultimately pushed the needle for why I want to learn more about data science and embark on the MIDS program.