My name is Cyrus Hatam, and I am a rising sophomore at Princeton University interested in data science and international affairs, and for the past eight weeks, I have been interning at Syntasa. During my internship, I primarily focused on an end-to-end analytics project centered around COVID-19, combining and manipulating multiple county-level datasets from various sources and using this aggregation as a base for exploratory data analysis, descriptive modeling, and ultimately, forecasting the spread of the disease.
Exploratory Dashboard in Syntasa Forecasting the Spread of Covid19
I used Syntasa in conjunction with Google BigQuery, Google Data Studio, and Jupyter Notebook throughout this project, and I created Syntasa apps for aggregating my datasets and updating the dynamic elements on a daily basis in BQ. In addition to automatically reloading my data on a schedule, Syntasa also allowed me to clearly visualize my various data sources that were being consolidated in an interactive workflow.
App View in Syntasa
Interactive App Flow Diagram
Before this project, I did not have very much exposure to any of the aforementioned services or to data science in general, but I was able to learn quickly with the help of my supervisor, Adam Neo. We had meetings almost every day to go over aspects of the project and to troubleshoot things that were not working. I also had the opportunity to learn about aspects of data science and machine learning that were not directly related to my project (e.g. neural networks), and through several meetings with people from different branches of the company (from sales to DevOps to product management), I was also able to gain exposure to the ins and outs of the start-up setting.
I greatly enjoyed my time at Syntasa both because I had the freedom to work on my own project and because I had the opportunity to meet and exchange ideas with so many of the company’s employees.
