Dr William Peter Nicholson
Ph.D. Physics, University College London
Data Science and Machine Learning Expert
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
Google Cloud Digital Leader
IBM Machine Learning Professional
PRINCE2® Practitioner
Personal Profile
- Experienced data scientist, machine learning specialist, and lecturer in data analytics, with eleven years' data science experience across industry and academia, working with complex mathematics, physics, and biomedical systems modeling. Analysis of large scale data-sets (PySpark), ML algorithms (neural networks, CNN, U-Net), time-series analysis (SARIMAX, ARIMA, ETS), and industry standard technologies (Python, PyTorch, AWS, R, SQL, NoSQL).
- Sponsored University College London Ph.D. Physics graduate and Professional Member of BCS (The British Chartered Institute for IT).
- Team Leadership and project management demonstrated in both start-up and established businesses, with industry experience in Head of Data Science positions.
- Driven to continually improve my core data science skill sets and broader business mindset through continuing professional certifications (AWS Cloud Practitioner, Google Cloud Digital Leader, IBM Machine Learning Professional) and advanced project leader certification (PRINCE2 Practitioner).
- Career focused on engineering solutions, machine learning, big data, and data visualization; using my technical skills to extract the maximum knowledge and practical use from software and data. To deliver first rate programming skills alongside a full understanding of how IT is integral to strategic decisions, profitability and functionality.
Professional Experience
Lead Project Engineer, Fumec/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, México City
09/22-to-date
- Lead developer for the design and implementation of a full-stack JavaScript app utilizing artificial intelligence algorithms within an antimicrobial resistance strategy.
- Worked extensively with decision makers and healthcare professionals across Mexico to understand, design and implement project requirements.
- For the first time in México's history Primary Healthcare providers now have a way of recording and observing symptoms and treatments for STI's, upper and lower respiratory diseases, and abdominal conditions.
- Development of all aspects of the application, from database design through full-stack JavaScript implementation and data analysis; successfully implemented the first ever application specifically designed for primary healthcare providers, in Mexico, to record data for analysis of antimicrobial resistance patterns at the person, unit, state, region and national level.
Head of Data Science, Meru, México City
08/20-04/22 (20 mos.)
- Head of the Data Science team of a Y Combinator start-up, from company age of 2-months through successful Series A funding. E-commerce and the importation of products from China to the Latin American wholesale market.
- Led a team of 10 data scientists (5 in Mexico, 5 in Ningbo, China) to build out market research towards profitable product selection and product price forecasting. Successfully leveraged Python, SQL, and Tableau tools to guide category managers in both Mexico and China towards their next recommended purchases.
- Designed (Python) and implemented (AWS Lambda) the pricing algorithm that priced shipments of goods across the entire lifecycle from Chinese manufacturing costs, freight-forwarding to Port-of-Ningbo, international shipping costs, customs costs, and finally last-mile costs.
- Extensive use of Python web-scraping tools Scrapy.py and Selenium to understand market prices for product (web-scraping of Amazon.mx, Mercado Libre), international shipping rates (web-scraping of icontainers.com, searates.com), and other market relevant data sources (web-scraping of Shanghai Shipping Exchange). All work deployed to either AWS Lambda or EC2 instances, with UNIX cron facilities for automated job scheduling.
Senior Data Scientist, CHEP LATAM, México City
10/18-08/20 (20 mos.)
- Developed and implemented data-driven supply and demand optimization strategies across the LATAM region, including the development of machine learning algorithms for forecasting KPI's.
- Machine learning and advanced data analytics techniques (time series analysis, SARIMAX family of models) to develop automated AI tools, working with structured and unstructed data (internal and external).
- Develop forecasting tools for use both within CHEP (product production forecasting) and external clients (Retail Index forecasting at whole market and market specific levels).
Professor of Data Analytics, Tecnológico de Monterrey (for Trilogy Education Services), México City
01/18-10/18 (10 mos.)
- Professor of big data analytics; designing and leading classes, in-person, across industry leading technologies Python, JavaScript, HTML/CSS, API Interactions, SQL, Hadoop, Tableau, Advanced Statistics, Machine Learning, R, Git/GitHub.
- Developed and delivered lectures on mathematics, machine learning, and Python SciPy stack. Lead working groups of students through machine learning and data science project design, development, and analysis.
- Inspired development of data analytics, machine learning and visualization skill sets to classes of adult students.
Project Manager, Barclays Corporate Banking, London
08/14-12/17 (40 mos.)
- Project Manager leading the pilot programme to implement the first UK banking industry voice recognition solution for telephone banking clients.
- Oversaw negotiation and design of the pilot launch phase of the programme, where voice recognition technology would first be used in a live environment to communicate with bank customers. Responsible for data acquisition, analysis with SQL and Python, and reporting of product performance during the pilot itself.
- Strong leadership and communication skills to work efficiently alongside the full range of stakeholders; from the highest corporate level department leads, through the software and network engineering teams, to the call centre staff themselves.
- Multiple additional technology project management responsibilities within large international Corporate Bank supporting the delivery of technology projects and sub - projects that introduced significant change to Corporate Banking business.
Post-Doctoral Research Associate, University College London
01/11-01/13 (24 mos.)
- Awarded European Union funding to collaborate with Laboratoire de Planétologie de Grenoble, France. Designed, developed and delivered online / cloud computer simulation of climate and atmospheric mathematics to be accessed and used by scientists worldwide. Delivered, on time, an online 3D Mars atmosphere computer simulation.
- Quantitative and programming skills: successfully designed, developed and delivered a computer simulation of climate and atmospheric maths/physics (Python, FORTRAN, full stack JavaScript).
- Client focus and team working skills: to effectively communicate with all team members to understand and meet their expectations and requirements for the design of the online project.
Contact
Education
Ph.D. Physics
University College London
2005-2010
MSc Space Science
University College London
2004-2005
BSc Astrophysics
University of Edinburgh
1999-2003
Publications
- Nicholson, W.P., Ph.D. Thesis, 2011
- Nicholson, W.P., et. al., Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc., 400, 369-382, 2009
- Moffat-Griffin, T., A.D. Aylward, W.P. Nicholson, Ann. Geophys., 28, 2147-2158, 2007
Professional Qualifications and Memberships
Google Cloud Digital Leader
Google Cloud
September 2022
AWS Cloud Technical Essentials
Amazon Web Services
June 2022
Building a Data Science Team
John Hopkins University
May 2022
IBM Machine Learning Professional Certificate
IBM
May 2022
Professional Membership of BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT
BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT
May 2016
PRINCE2® Practitioner in Project Management
Certificate number 00261331, candidate number NH34065354
April 2016
PRINCE2® Foundation in Project Management
certificate number 00198850, candidate number YV32998610
September 2015
Awarded Certificate in IT (Ofqual level 4 qualification)
BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT
Apr 2014
Object-Oriented Programming Using C++, C# in Detail
City University, London, UK
2013
Awarded sponsorship
London Business School, London, UK
October 2007
Languages
- English: Native speaker
- Spanish: Intermediate
Extracurricular Activities
-
Charitable activities (2004)
- 612km/7-day bike ride for Macmillan Cancer Relief raising £3500.
-
Civil Aviation Authority pilot flight training (2002)
-
SCUBA diving training (2001)
- PADI Open Water Diver; PADI Advanced Open Water Diver.
-
University Student Council member (2002-2003)
- Edinburgh University Science and Engineering faculty representative.