About me
Hi, I’m Jacob. Nice to meet you!
I’m a data scientist at Capital One Canada. Currently, I lead our acquisitions risk model team that builds the models that predict risk of default for incoming applications. Previously, I worked on our central tooling team, building inner-source and open-source Python libraries to make it easier for data scientists to do their work.
Before I started at Capital One, I studied at the University of Waterloo (UW), where I graduated in 2019 with a bachelor of mathematics, with a major in statistics and a minor in economic theory.
Edmonton via Montreal, Waterloo, Toronto and Ottawa
I am currently based in Edmonton, having followed my wife here for her medical residency. I have luckily had the chance to experience living in a handful of cities across Canada. While I’m originally from Montreal, the co-op program at UW allowed me live in a few cities during my studies:
- Waterloo, while studying and working as a NSERC research assistant.
- Ottawa, while working as a research intern at Statistics Canada.
- Toronto, while working as a data scientist co-op at Capital One.
I appreciated getting the chance to live in each of these cities for an extended period of time, and I think it allowed me to get to know each place in a way that just visiting would not have.
I am actively involved in housing advocacy at Grow Together Edmonton, where we work to break down the barriers that prevent housing from being built. When I was in Toronto, I was a core advocate with More Neighbours Toronto.
In the rest of my time, I enjoy rock climbing, cycling and baking bread. A few times a year, I’ll go on a reading binge, devouring multiple books in the span of a weekend. Sometimes, when I don’t feel like it’s just working more, I’ll do a little data-related side project that is different from my work, so I don’t feel like I’m working on my own spare time. That’s mostly what you’ll read in my blog.