About

Hi! I’m Melissa! Thank you for taking some time to check out my personal site. Here are some things about me:

• I have a BSc, PGDipSci, and MSc (First Class Honours) in Statistics from The University of Auckland (the birthplace of R programming!).

• I have ten years of programming experience and can program very confidently in R, Python, SQL, HTML/CSS, and LaTeX. I also have experience with JavaScript (especially in the context of R Shiny), MATLAB, SAS, and bash/shell scripting.

• My favourite areas of statistics are health and ecology, but I like to learn about anything!

• I have worked in a range of different roles:

  • Statistician for a Canadian health economics and outcomes research company.

  • Product Operations Manager for a US AI company, running projects to streamline ethical data collection for training LLMs and agentic AI assistants.

  • Research Assistant at The University of Auckland, investigating new statistical modelling approaches for multi-species spatial capture-recapture.

  • Analytics Engineer, developing R Shiny applications for US pharmaceutical and cancer research purposes.

  • Data Engineer at a Canadian digital marketing agency, creating data pipelines with Google Cloud Platform.

  • Information Analyst in the New Zealand health sector, creating R Shiny web tools and producing official government health statistics.

  • Mathematics Tutor, both privately and at a math tuition business in Auckland, where I tutored students aged 5-18 in general mathematics, calculus, and statistics.

• The skills and tools I have used in my professional experience include: R (especially Shiny and the tidyverse), Python (PySpark, NumPy, pandas), SQL, Excel, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Databricks, Hex, Jupyter Notebooks, Google Cloud Platform (especially BigQuery), bash, GitHub, GitLab, Gitflow, CI/CD, Agile development, and various statistical concepts (e.g. GLM/GLMM, GAM, survival analysis).

• Right now, I’m learning Strudel REPL and Swift. I hope to eventually learn some JS libraries, AWS, and Power BI too! I love learning new tools and programming languages.

• I grew up in Aotearoa (New Zealand) and moved to Vancouver, BC, Canada in February 2023.

• Outside of work, I teach tap dancing, draw, play the drums, hike, camp, and I’m currently learning French. I love to read all kinds of books and I am a big Stephen King fan!