My name is Aaron Berdanier
(he/him) I'm a data scientist who works on AI assistance and intelligence augmentation.
I apply AI and machine learning to human-centered problems. I'm especially interested in structured data extraction and syntheic data generation. Example projects include:
- Parsing inbound sales emails to help salespeople target certain leads
- Identifying key findings in scientific articles to support literature search
- Synthesizing employee feedback to identify company trends
- Matching clients with providers that share criteria to improve patient care
- Writing natural language summaries of scientific experiment outcomes to help researchers interpret the results
Previously, I was a product manager, helping to build analytics products at Dude Solutions and data and software products for on-demand public transit at TransLoc. Before moving into product management, I was a data scientist at TransLoc developing simulation tools for public transit planning.
I have a background in environmental statistics and I've worked on a range of topics throughout my career. Large projects include building data infrastructure for an international stream monitoring network at Duke University, analyzing global agricultural greenhouse gas emissions at Colorado State University with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and teaching undergraduate courses at both Duke University and Beloit College.
I was a fellow at The Data Incubator, where I built classification models to predict tree cover over houses with satellite remote sensing data, and I received a PhD in Ecology from Duke University, where I used Bayesian state-space models to understand tree water use and predict forest responses to drought. My academic work is published in multiple peer-reviewed journals.
I live in Durham, NC. In my personal time I enjoy long-distance running on mountain trails and watching movies with my partner.
News
- TransLoc Leader Aaron Berdanier Honored with Association for Commuter Transportation’s “40 Under 40 Award” TransLoc (2020)
- New maps show Durham, Wake early-voting sites near bus stops The News and Observer (2020)
- The best way to do microtransit? Have transit agencies operate it Mobility Lab (2018)
- Three months in, Nowalk’s Wheels2U gains momentum The Hour (2018)
- Short-term droughts can mean long-term struggle For trees in Southeastern forests Environmental Monitor (2015)
- Drought implicated in slow death of trees in Southeastern forests Phys.org (2015)
- New drone technology may take guesswork out of estimating forest carbon Technology.org (2015)
Articles
- Generating synthetic training data with LLMs Medium (2024)
- How to bootstrap your way to language model personalization Medium (2023)
- Better product management through science Product Coalition (2021)
- Strategically multiply the impact of other data The Startup (2020)
- No one needs your data Towards Data Science (2020)
- Data products: introduction Medium (2020)
- Scientific research articles here
