Portland, OR · Open to Actuarial & Analytics roles
Actuarial Candidate & Data Scientist
Hi! I'm Ali. I work where statistics meets software — turning messy data into models, and models into things you can actually use. Below are eight projects showcasing some of my undergraduate and graduate work, and beyond.
Selected Work
Eight projects, end to end.
Statistics, probability, and machine-learning projects — each one links the full write-up and the code behind it.
Reed College · Senior Thesis · Math 470 · 2021
Spectral Statistics of Random Matrices
My senior thesis in mathematics — and an R package to go with it.
Reed College · Math 392 · Mathematical Statistics · 2021
Poisson Regression, Three Ways
One count model, seen through frequentist, penalized, and Bayesian lenses.
Boston University · MA 576 · 2023
Climate and the Evolution of Complex Tone
Do dry climates hold tonal languages back? A survival-analysis take.
Boston University · MA 751 · Machine Learning · 2022
Anomaly Detection with Karhunen–Loève Expansions
Boosting a classifier by projecting outside the reference eigenspace.
Boston University · MA 575 · Linear Models · 2021
Forecasting Bike-Share Demand
Regression models that hold up against a growing user base.
Reed College · Math 243 · Statistics · 2020
The MLB Luxury Tax and the Players It Left Behind
Did baseball's salary cap push capable players into early retirement?
Reed College · Math 241 · Data Science · 2020
Harmonic Stylometry of Classical Composers
Fingerprinting composers by their harmony alone.
Independent Project · Number Theory × Music · 2022
Music of the Primes
Rebuilding Western music theory from the number systems up.
Toolkit
What I work with.
Statistics & Modeling
- Regression & GLMs
- Survival Analysis
- Time-Series Forecasting
- Statistical Inference
- Monte Carlo Simulation
- Machine Learning
Programming & Data
- R · tidyverse
- Python
- SQL
- Excel · VBA
- Git
Actuarial
- Financial Mathematics
- Econometrics
- Predictive Modeling
- Insurance Fundamentals
About
A statistician who likes to build.
I'm an early-career actuary and quantitative analyst based in Portland, OR metro area. I hold an M.A. in Statistics from Boston University and a B.A. in Mathematics from Reed College, and I've passed actuarial Exams P and FM.
My background is heavy on probability, statistical modeling, and communicating results, but I'm just as comfortable writing the code and building the pipeline. Most of what I make starts as a question and ends as something you can read, run, or click.
Education
Boston University
M.A. Statistics
Financial Derivatives · Stochastic Processes · Generalized Linear Models
2021 – 2023
Reed College
B.A. Mathematics
Econometrics · Statistical Learning · Data Science
2017 – 2021
Experience
Research Associate
2023 – 2025
Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University
- Built automated R and Excel pipelines to clean, validate, and analyze 15+ economic and demographic datasets spanning 12M+ records.
- Led the quantitative analysis on several concurrent projects, choosing methods and running post-hoc policy analyses.
- Turned statistical findings into reports, time-series visualizations, and geospatial heatmaps for non-technical stakeholders.
Web Systems Administrator
2020 – 2021
Office of Student Engagement, Reed College
- Maintained data integrity for 10K+ student records through SQL queries against a live platform serving 1K+ users.
- Cut funding-request processing time by 80% with improved web interfaces and database automation.
- Led a small student development team and acted as primary liaison to management.
Contact
Let's talk.
I'm open to actuarial and analytical roles in insurance. Email is the fastest way to reach me — I read everything.