Civil Engineering Data Analyst

Mei-Cheng Shih, Ph.D.

Atlanta, GA 217-***-**** ******@********.*** ***-*****.****@******.***

www.linkedin.com/in/meicheng-shih https://github.com/mshih2/Data-Science-Projects

Summary

* ***** ** industry experience in applying machine learning, statistics, and optimization techniques, specialized in dynamic predictive modeling, forest models, time series analysis, and pricing-demand forecast

Technical Skill

Languages: Python, Java, R, DB2/Teradata SQL, C++, CPLEX, PySpark (DataFrame mainly), Spotfire/Tableau

Experience & Activities

Norfolk Southern (NS) Corporation Atlanta, GA

Data Scientist, Operations Research Department June 2017 - Current

Constructing and improving a dynamic (real-time) predictive framework for equipment maintenance time or unscheduled train demand, which potentially saves $0.5~$1.3 million fleet management cost

Improving and maintaining several optimization models for locomotive fleet management based on the demands of business partners, which are directly related to $4~$9 million of fleet rental and purchase costs

CSX Transportation Jacksonville, FL

Data Analyst Intern, Data Analytic Group May - Aug 2014

Used quantile regression to develop a Performance Index (PI) as an alert to the potential traffic congestion

The index was once included in the company’s daily report, and in a case saved $0.3 million traffic delay cost

SinoTech Engineering Consultant, Inc. Taipei, Taiwan

Operations Research Specialist, Transportation Research Group Sep 2011 - July 2012

Led an Operations Research team of 4 people to develop an optimization model to determine a cyclic schedule for equipment utilization, the output of the model saved cost by $0.08 million per year in a real corridor in Taiwan

Projects

Predicting Locomotive Shop Cycle Time and Unscheduled Demand (NS project) June 2017- Current

Constructing two dynamic (real-time training) predictive frameworks which composed of decision tree, time series, and gradient boosting regression which use both dynamic (sequential and time series related) and static features

These two models potentially help company improve equipment utilization and resource allocation efficiency, which potentially saved $1.3 million equipment idle cost, and $0.5 million shipment delay cost per each month

Using Lasso Quantile Regression for Predicting Shipment Delay (PhD work) April - Sep 2016

Wrote 400 lines of Python codes in the Oriented-Object Programming style to first extract information from 20 G+ database, then generate regression features by a Monte-Carlo-based simulation process

Constructed quantile regression models for the prediction of delay distributions using rqPen, and rBayesianOptimization libraries in R, the final MAPE of both models are around 19%

Time Series Analysis of Order Counts for a Food Delivery Company (Side Project) May- June 2018

Conducted time series analysis, built a SARIMA model to forecast the daily delivery counts for a business partner

In R, detected and replaced outliers using STL model, then used rolling-forecasting-based cross validation to select a model, the output improved 66% of RMSE compared to the polynomial regression benchmark

Price-Demand Forecast for a Retail Company (Side Project) June 2018

Used gradient boosting trees to predict the total sale amount based on product unit cost and product features

Suggested a discriminative pricing strategy for products with different brand and product size under a category

Reinforcement Learning, Optimizing Equipment to Shop Dates and Routes (NS project) June 2017 - Current

Find business partners’ demands, implement the required changes by modifying model or developing new modules in Java under Linux environment

The output improves the equipment utilization efficiency, which potentially saves $3~$9 billions of equipment rental or purchase cost per quarter

Education

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Urbana, IL

Doctorate in Transportation Science Aug 2012 - Aug 2017

National Taiwan University Taipei, Taiwan

Master in Transportation Science Sep 2008 - June 2010

National Central University Taoyuan, Taiwan

Bachelor in Civil Engineering Sep 2003 - June 2008

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