AKO HEIDARI

Senior Data Scientist with over 7 years of experience in data science, specializing in NLP, LLM, and Gen-AI. Proven expertise in developing advanced AI models to solve complex business problems. Extensive experience working with large enterprise companies and leading cross-functional teams to drive data-driven decision-making. Strong background in mentoring junior data scientists and applying machine learning best practices.

Career Essentials in Generative AI

• Graduate Research Assistant, 01/2016, 05/2017, Center for Ocean Land Atmosphere (COLA), Fairfax, VA, EaSM-3: Land Use Change and Land Atmosphere Feedback Processes as Regulators of Regional Climate, NASA: NNX13AQ21G Diagnosis and Validation of Land-Atmosphere Feedback in Two Global Models
• Graduate Research Assistant, 08/2013, 12/2015, George Mason University, Department of Geography and Geo-Information System Science, Water Cycle Intensification Indicator (WCI). NASA-ROSES-2012 A47: Development and Testing Potential Indicators for The National Climate Assessment

• "Satellite, Models, and Re-Analysis: Estimates of the Global Water Budget" - GMU-COLA, May 5th, 2015.
• "Climate Change Impact on the Global Water Cycle: Increase in the Range Between Wet and Dry Season Precipitation" - GMU-COLA, May 2nd, 2015.
• "Estimation of Generalized Extreme Value Distribution: Maximum-likelihood Method; Precipitation Annual Maximum Series" - Center for Ocean Land Atmosphere (COLA), GMU, Burke Garden, VA, Dec 7th, 2014.
• "The Impact of Climate Change on Rainfall Intensity-Duration-Frequency (IDF)" - Water Symposium, Civil Engineering Department, GMU, Nov 10th, 2014.

• Winner of Innovative Award at the 2nd Mason Water Symposium, GMU Fairfax, VA, May 2016.
• Research Scholarship: George Mason University, 2013-2017

• Heidari, A. "Confronting Climate Model with Satellite Data." 3rd NASA Satellite Soil Moisture Validation and Application Workshop, New York City, NY, September 2016.
• Heidari, A. "Uncertainty of Coupling Metrics between Soil Moisture and Heat Fluxes." 2015 AGU Fall Meeting.
• Mbuh, M. J., Houser, P. R., & Heidari, A. "Water Quality Estimation Using Combined Water Chemistry and Field Spectroscopy in the Shenandoah River, Virginia." International Journal of Applied Geospatial Research (IJAGR), 7(2), 14-37, 2016.

• Collaborated with NASA JPL on the validation of SMAP satellite soil moisture data by comparing it with in-situ data in Australia, contributing to the improvement of remote sensing techniques. Sep 2015.
• Assisted in data collection and site maintenance for "The Cold Land Processes Field Experiment (CLPX)" project in Colorado, conducted by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), July 2015.

Official Chess Expert (rating >2000) from the US Chess Federation

• Achieved 35% improvement in ETA by introducing advanced clustering for Geo-spatial data pre-processing
• Improved the accuracy of model from 63% to 78% by implementing an RNN with LSTM architecture.
• Successfully applied XGB to optimize the prediction of birth outcomes, resulting in a substantial accuracy improvement from 53% to 78%
• Winner of Innovative Award at the 2nd Mason Water Symposium for advancing the Extreme Value Analysis for climate change anomaly detection.

• AGU
• USCF
• ASCE