We are excited to welcome Germán González, Jiaying Kou, Masoud Rahimi and Angela Ryan, who have joined AURIN’s Data Science Support team. Hao Chen has also joined the team as Spatial Database Software Developer, moving from the e-Infrastructure team.
Germán González is a data scientist with a passion for geospatial data, econometrics and time series analysis. He has has a double degree in History and Economics with a Masters in Economics. He is experienced in geospatial analysis, econometric, time series analysis, research, and teaching. He has five years of experience in consultancy and has participated in projects that use geospatial data to make recommendations for infrastructure projects. In addition, he was a research associate at the (UNSW Sydney) and a research assistant at the Centre of Studies of Economic Development in Colombia. Germán is passionate about innovation, travelling, hiking, camping, cooking, and connecting with new cultures and languages.
‘The applications of GIS are limited only by the imagination. AURIN has great potential for innovation in this field and I am excited to be a part of it.’ — Germán González
Dr Jiaying Kou is joining AURIN as a Training Support Officer in Data Science Support Team. She recently completed her PhD in Computer Science at Victoria University. Her research crosses the disciplines of economics and computer science, applying data science methods to understand housing market economics and location based social networks. She also holds a Bachelor of Economics (Finance) from Shandong University, China, and a Master in Applied Commerce (Accounting) from the University of Melbourne. Before moving to AURIN, she worked as a Research Ambassador at Victoria University, and an Informatics Specialist at the Social Cultural Informatics Platform (SCIP) at the University of Melbourne. She is passionate about supporting research staff and students on statistical/econometric, methodological, computational, and data-related questions arising from research. In her free time, she loves writing popular science blogs and snowboarding.
‘I first came across AURIN during my PhD, when they provided me with a large valuable housing dataset at a point-level detail with rich information, which pushed my understanding of housing research to a new level. I am grateful to be now able to work at AURIN, and share with research staff and students knowledge in this new and exciting field of computational urban research. It is a great pleasure to work in a role that matches my research passion.’ — Jiaying Kou
Masoud Rahimi is a Geospatial Data Scientist with solid experience in geospatial data handling and analysis as well as software development, machine learning and Natural Language Processing (NLP). Masoud is finalising his PhD studies in Spatial Information Science at the Faculty of Engineering and IT at the University of Melbourne. He holds a Masters and a Bachelors degree in Geographic Information Systems and Geomatics from prestigious universities in Iran. Masoud’s PhD research is generally focused on employing data-driven solutions to automate monitoring provided service quality in public transport infrastructure. Masoud will be contributing to several projects in AURIN including the development and implementation of urban digital twins’ systems/standards.
‘What makes AURIN special is its significant role in bringing researchers, industries, tools and data sources together. Sitting between industry and research domains allows AURIN to support the research community in Australia by providing them with cutting-edge techs, standards and novel data sources. In this big picture, the AURIN’s Data Science Support Team has a key role to play and I am glad to be part of the adventure.’ — Masoud Rahimi
Angela Ryan is joining the team in the position of Social Data Scientist. Angela has a background in state/local government and industry where she worked on a number of interesting projects, such as the urban development program. She is experienced in using R, python, Power BI, and GIS to create, clean, wrangle, integrate, analyse and visualise spatial, temporal, sensor, and imagery data. She is passionate about drawing insights out of data to support evidence-based decision making and research. She has a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science and Management specialising in Social Systems and a Master of IT majoring in Spatial.
Germán, Jiaying, Masoud, Angela and Hao join Michael Rigby and Flavia Barar, who have both worked at AURIN for a number of years. We look forward to working with these new members of the Data Science Support Team as AURIN develops a new suite of data access and tools to support Australia’s research community.