Meinhard Ploner
Verified Expert in Engineering
Data Scientist and Developer
Meinhard is a leader in data science and analytics with more than 15 years of experience. His strong background in statistics (a Ph.D.), ML, AI, and optimization allows him to see the overall picture and to design problem-specific algorithms, solutions, and visualizations. He's worked at Fortune 500 companies and startups and has also set up and led a team of data scientists. Meinhard joined Toptal to help customers in the creation of efficient and robust data-driven solutions.
Portfolio
Experience
Availability
Preferred Environment
SourceTree, Confluence, Slack, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Jupyter, RStudio, Linux, Windows, MacOS
The most amazing...
...things I've built were two data-driven apps which saved the company a seven-digit amount of cost per annum and a platform for AI-driven automated trading.
Work Experience
Lead Data Scientist | Project Manager of Digital Transformation
GKN
- Invented and implemented new algorithms for efficient 2.5D part nesting in additive manufacturing.
- Advised other employees on statistics- and data science-related topics as well as created ad-hoc analyses, which sometimes led to the creation of dedicated data-driven applications.
- Designed and implemented data-driven (web) applications, mostly using Shiny and the Docker stack.
- Created machine learning pipelines working on three-dimensional data (3D).
- Designed and created some very smart visualizations with a huge impact on the business value of the company.
- Worked in the context of Industry 4.0 (IIoT). Certain pipelines had to deal with huge amounts of data (TBs).
Data Science Lead
BCG Digital Ventures
- Set up the data science cohort and led a team of four data scientists.
- Worked on innovation and incubation of ventures for DAX30 companies.
- Traded off fast solutions (minimum viable solution) vs. sustainable solutions.
- Led and hosted various topic discussions including product analytics, discrete optimization, as well as machine learning.
Senior Software Engineer of Product Analytics | Senior Data Scientist
ProSiebenSat.1 Digital GmbH
- Improved the digital product by using data-driven product management and also refined the KPI system.
- Designed and evaluated the results of a design of experiment (A/B test) including a sample size calculation and extensive scenario analysis.
- Performed extensive research about data quality and set up a new tracking concept.
- Worked with the big data team on a data platform based on big data Lambda architecture.
- Coordinated the cooperation with the University of Bolzano (Prof. Ricci) for research on recommender system research stations; also co-authored a dedicated paper.
- Oversaw and was in charge of topics related to data science, machine learning, and recommender systems.
Senior Software Engineer | Mobile AR Expert
X-root Software GmbH
- Designed, engineered, and architectured mobile software applications.
- Led the technology for augmented reality (AR) applications.
- Implemented a mobile app to monitor IT infrastructures.
- Led data- and algorithmic-related topics and implementations.
CEO
Data-ploner.com
- Analyzed ecological data using adequate methods (CCA, PCA) for the client: EURAC Research, Bolzano (I).
- Implemented statistical algorithms for survival analysis and fractional polynomials. The R Packages logistf, coxphw, coxphf, and concreg are published on CRAN for the client: Institute CeMSIIS, University of Vienna (A).
- Consulted and conceptualized different case studies for the BI project "GeoBI for the client" TIS Innovation Park (now IDM/NOI), Bolzano (I).
- Conceptualized and implemented a mobile app for an online broker for the client: Brokerjet, Vienna (A); along with leading topics and implementations.
Quant (Quantitative Analyst) — Alternative Investment and Quantitative Research
Erste Group Bank AG
- Designed and invented new profitable trading systems. The implemented systems reach from intraday systems to long-term trading systems.
- Designed and integrated a dedicated infrastructure allowing for parallel computing. This was then used to implement and simulate complex credit derivatives (CDO and ABS).
- Worked on solutions for special financial problems and pricing of complex instruments.
Experience
An Unsupervised Learning Analysis on Countries Based on COVID-19 Data
Having not an immense amount of data, careful feature engineering was performed to extract meaningful features for the machine learning step. The cluster analysis was conducted using some less-used methods: UMAP projection and HDBSCAN.
The analysis and its outcome are published on Towardsdatascience.com. The code is available on GitHub (Github.com/ploner/coronavirus-clustering).
Skills
Languages
Python 3, R, C++, Objective-C, Java, Fortran, Python
Frameworks
RStudio Shiny, Spark, Unity3D
Other
Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data Visualization, Time Series Analysis, Supervised Learning, Unsupervised Learning, Experimental Design, Statistics, Statistical Analysis, Data Mining, Dash, Deep Learning, Scenario Analysis, Biometrics, Customer Lifetime Value, Optimization
Paradigms
Agile Software Development, Functional Reactive Programming, Distributed Computing
Platforms
Docker, Amazon Web Services (AWS), iOS, MacOS, Windows, Linux, RStudio, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Eclipse, Android, Oracle
Storage
MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Oracle RDBMS, Apache Hive, HDFS
Libraries/APIs
PySpark, Keras, Mixpanel API
Tools
FreeCAD, MATLAB, Jupyter, Slack, Confluence, SourceTree, Xcode, Blender, Jira, Trello, Docker Compose
Education
Ph.D. in Statistics
University of Vienna - Vienna, Austria
Certifications
Executive Data Science Capstone
Johns Hopkins University (Coursera)
Discrete Optimization
The University of Melbourne (Coursera)
XSeries Big Data
University of California, Berkeley (BerkeleyX)
Process Mining
Eindhoven University of Technology (Coursera)
Mining Massive Datasets
Stanford University (Coursera)
Functional Programming Principles in Scala
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Coursera)
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