Hola! Hi! Imaynalla!

I'm Belu Ticona

Computer Science Machine Learning Prospective PhD student

Ticona aka "tikuna" (in Aymara, born on the sun heat)
About

What you should know about me?

Profile Picture

Hello there! I'm Maria Belen but everyone knows as Belu. I'm proudly Argentinian, brown, nerd ("ñoña"), latina and daughter of a public education system. I aware of my priviligies, eager to build an inclusive and diverse world for those who didn't have the opportunities I did. I believe in real actions and results. I love working with people who share conviction and passion about what they do.

Profile

I've recently finished my degree in Computer Science, specialiazing in applied machine learning.

Currently, I'm seeking PhD positions (Fall 2024) in the following topics:

  • NLP and speech technologies for low-resource languages
  • computing education & ML applied to social sciencies
  • openness: open science, open data and research communities

If you think I might be a good fit in what you are doing, feel free to contact me :)

Skills

  • Event and community management, open science and open data, public speaking.
  • Tools: Python, R, C++, C, PostgresSQL, Spark, Git, Linux, Shell, Latex, Haskell, PHP, JavaScript & Web Frameworks.
  • SWE: Object-Oriented Programming, Data Structures, Test-Driven Development, Problem Solving.
  • Packages: Scikit-Learn, Pytorch, SciPy, Pandas, Jupyter Tools
  • Statistics/ML: Data Visualization (Matplotlib, Plotly), ML Algorithms, Clustering & Classification, Dimensional Reduction, Natural Language Processing, Web Scraping.
  • MLOps and others: Kubeflow, Airflow, Docker
Resume

More of my credentials.

Professional Experience

Data & Applied Scientist Intern

Octuber 2022 - January 2023

Microsoft

- The Web Experiences Team builds comprehensive and engaging content, services, and platforms for consumers to access the information they need anywhere on any device, and for enterprises to enhance their employee and customer experiences.

Data Science Intern

November 2021 - present

Medallia

- Athena is a platform that applies AI to uncover hidden meanings in vast amounts of customer experience information and determine the right action for each touchpoint and journey.

Data Scientist

September - October 2021

Aristas

- Aristas is a consulting firm that empowers data into practical information through mathematics and computer sciences.

Data Scientist

February - August 2021

NTT Data - Europa & Latam

- The Big Data and Advanced Analytics team is part of the international consulting firm NTT Data, focused on powering local companies using data to make faster and smarter decisions.

Research Assistant

March 2021 - May 2022

Arduino en la Escuela, an open source project to teach programming skills in low-resource schools.

- Member of Didactics in Computing Education, mentored by Christian Cossio Mercado.
- Educational block-based programming tool analysis, article presented at JADICC 2021

Understanding how to guide perovskite synthesis through machine learning methods in imbalance experimental datasets.

- Compared individual and ensemble classification models used to predict perovskite crystalization.
- Exploring different approaches to deal with imbalance datasets.
- Member of Interdisciplinary Group of ML applied to nanosynthesis, mentored by Diego Onna and Laura Acion.
- Poster presented at National Congress "Nano 20/21" (April, 2021)

Surfaces and Functional Materials Lab, UBA.

- Performed network analysis applied to Stober's synthesis model for a deeper understanding about how to improve nanoparticles synthesis.

Undergraduate Teaching Assistant

March 2019 - July 2021

University of Buenos Aires

- CS Courses: Introduction to Algorithms and Data Structures, Algorithms and Data Structures, Computer Organization I & Computer Organization II.
- University Programming Workshop
- Teacher Training courses: Educational Problems (Introduction to Educational Theory), General Didactics.

Co-Founder
and Speaker Coach

May 2015 - June 2018

TEDxJoven@CNBA

- Organized 2 TEDx events with more than 1000 registered attendees each one. Talks have achieved more than 350 thousand views on YouTube.

Education

Licenciate in Computer Science (~equivalent to MSc)

2021 - 2023

University of Buenos Aires

  • Relevant courses: Software Engineering I, Algorithms and Data Structures III, Operating Systems, Data Laboratory, Introduction to Quantum Information Processing.
  • NAACL scholar to attend Summer School of NLP 2022 at Johns Hopkins University.
  • University of Dortmund - Germany (2021)
    Scholarship to attend virtually to the course "Data Science and Machine Learning in Python", given by Stephen Weyers.

B.S. in Computer Science

2018 - 2021

University of Buenos Aires

  • Mentor at Open Science and Research Reproducibility Program at OLS-5 (former mentee at OLS-4)
  • National Autonomous University of Mexico - Mexico (2020)
    Scholarship for an exchange semester abroad. Courses: Data Bases, Computational Geometry and Cryptography.
Achievements

Awards & Scholarships

Rather than a list of awards, a list of memories and learning experiences.

Community, Voluntering & Some Results

"Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all"

Trying to create a positive impact in the world

  • Elected Student Representative Council at CS-Department UBA (2020-2022)
  • Operations and Logistics Volunteer at LatinX in AI (2021 ICML Workshop)
  • Member at Technolatinas , Latin American Women in Tech Community (2021-present)
  • Science Popularizer (prepared workshops and courses, organized CS Week Event anually | CS Departament (2019-2021)
  • Mentor at UxU Program, guiding students to persue a higher education degree | UBA Extension and Outreachy Office (2017-2018)
  • Teaching high schools students and inspiring them to finish high school | Puerta 18 Foundation (2017-2018)
  • Member of "It is not magic, it's science!", a science fair program for vulnerable neighborhoods | UBA Outreachy Program (2016)
Contact

I'd Love To Hear From You.

Where to find me

Buenos Aires, CABA
Argentina

Email Me At
ticona.belu (at) gmail (dot) com