Hi, my name is Jennifer.

I'm from cohort 13, and I'm here with Emre.

Emre is a past alumni of the MSDS at University of San Francisco.

It's great meeting you. Can you tell me a little bit more about yourself?

Yeah, of course. It's nice to be here.

I'm Emre. I'm from cohort nine. I graduated in 2021, and right now I’m working as an AI solutions architect at Google.

And how did your time at the University of San Francisco help you prepare for this role?

The MSDS program gave me a really nice foundation about data science and machine learning.

Then I built up on this for my career to be an AI solutions architect today.

And I think before you were an AI solutions architect, you were also a data scientist, correct?

Yes. So right after graduation, I worked as a data scientist and also a machine learning engineer in a consultancy firm.

And what were you doing for your practicum?

I worked as a data scientist for my practicum.

What company was your practicum with?

The company was Dictionary.com.

That had some on-page ads, and I worked on click prediction models during my practicum.

It was a really real-world experience that I gained during my masters that prepared me for the job hunting and also the next step of my career.

What was your most challenging course, would you say?

The very advanced machine learning classes.

Yeah, I think that one's a really hard one for everyone.

Yeah. Yes.

Because you really deep dive and it’s a really hands-on and very technical class.

So you have to build everything from scratch using Python.

It also gives you a really good understanding of how machine learning models work in its core.

Why USF from all places you could have gone to?

I chose USF because it was a one-year intense program.

I checked the faculty members, and the internship was also one of my criteria.

Do you have any fun moments and any favorite moments?

I think you build really good friendships.

You always spend time together doing hackathons, some fun projects, and group projects.

Being in person, being on the campus, we collaborate with each other every day.

That is also a really nice benefit of the program.

How has getting your masters opened some doors for you for your career?

I got multiple offers as a data scientist and machine learning engineer.

And then it gave me a really good understanding of the core concepts of AI and machine learning.

And I always use this in my day-to-day job.

For your MSDS classmates, do you still talk to them?

Yes, of course. I still talk to them.

We have a core group of friends that I still see here in the Bay Area.

Alumni from different cohorts build a really good community and network here in the Bay Area.