The Humans Behind the AI - Samara Vazquez

We know that we’re only as good as our people, and at Ada Mode we have an impressive team at the helm. This Humans Behind the AI series aims to highlight the talented individuals that work here. For this month’s edition, we’re featuring Samara Vazquez, Graduate Data Scientist at Ada Mode.

What’s your role at Ada Mode?

Graduate Data Scientist.

What does your average day look like?

I start by exploring some of the things on our to-do list and then I kick off the working day with a morning meeting with the other data scientists on our team. In the meeting, we decide which are the top priority tasks to start or keep working on.

I usually work on cleaning data and setting it up to try new machine learning models. We also work quite often in the back-end side of things to deploy the machine learning models. If needed, I also contribute to market research tasks.

What's your favourite thing about working at Ada Mode?

My favourite thing about working at Ada Mode is being able to work on multiple projects and working closely with the other data scientists.

What has been your favourite project or challenge you've worked on?

I think the biggest challenge that I have faced so far was trying to identify sensor drift with a lot of incomplete data. Getting the data ready to be used and then testing a lot of different models in it was something I really enjoyed doing.

It seems like everyone at Ada Mode shares the same passion for tech. What about AI technology are you most passionate about?

I’ve always been fascinated by the number of problems that AI can solve. I think AI is going to change how industries work. For me, the best part about AI is the potential it has to improve a lot of things in a relatively simple manner.

Where do you see the industry heading in the next 3-5 years?

I think that everyone is realising now how useful machine learning can be when applied to traditional problems. We will probably see a lot of companies bringing more data scientists into their teams and building the infrastructure to make machine learning a part of their solutions. As for the specifics in AI, I think more research into reinforcement learning will enable this technology to be put into production and it will become more widespread.

What's something new you've learned in the past week?

We’ve been working a lot on AWS lately, so every week I learn new things about it. Last week I learned how to integrate AWS Cognito with API Gateway.

What are your top three books/ podcasts/ artists?

My three favourite books right now are probably:

• Inferior – Angela Saini
• Wild Swan. Three daughters of China. Jung Chang
• The shadow of the wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafón

What do you enjoy doing when you're not working?

I really enjoy doing exercise, I have always been really into running and for the last year or so I’ve started doing climbing. Covid has given me the opportunity to go hiking and explore the areas around Southampton where I'm based.

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