Real-life ML problem solving.
Last night’s meetup at Uber was an absolute blast! 🌟 The vibe was electric as data enthusiasts, professionals and curious minds packed into the Uber Amsterdam office, all ready for an evening of inspiration and learning.
💫 The first talk of the night took us deep into the world of payments at Uber, led by Claire Hempel, Okke van der Wal and Ed Lo. They painted a vivid picture of how Uber’s data science & machine learning Uber Engineering teams work behind the scenes, transforming vast amounts of data into actionable insights. We learned about the complexities of launching experiments and building models that support Uber’s global operations—a fascinating glimpse into how data drives one of the world’s most innovative companies.
💫 Second talk by Yu Jiang and Reinier Kruisbrink from Sia hit us with some mind-blowing insights on using AI to explore hashtag#ESG performance in job ads. What started as a project to spot gender biases in Dutch job ads using NLP has now evolved into something way bigger—analyzing green job ads internationally with the help of hashtag#LLMs and hashtag#GenAI. Their journey showed just how powerful AI can be in tackling real-world issues, and their latest whitepaper left us all thinking about how data science can shape the future of work.
💫 The night wrapped up with Oliver Ford and Rik van der Vlist taking us on a “Polar Expedition.” They broke down their experience transitioning ML pipelines from PySpark/Pandas to Polars, and let’s just say, it was a total game-changer. The speed improvements and enhanced developer experience they talked about had everyone nodding along, eager to try it out for themselves. It was the perfect mix of hands-on tips and big-picture thinking, making it a talk that’s going to stick with us for a while.
✨ As the night wound down, the Uber Amsterdam office floor was still buzzing with excitement. New ideas were sparked, and the collective buzz for what’s next in data science was contagious.
🧡 💙 Big shoutout to everyone who came out and to the awesome speakers who made the night insightful. Here’s to more nights of learning, connecting, and pushing the limits of what we can do with data science.