Data Scientist and Co-founder
Leveraging technology to build things. That is what I love doing. From the first webpage I built as a kid writing HTML, to developing econometric models at the South African Reserve Bank, building things has been a constant passion. Increasingly the economics profession is using the tools and ways of work of the IT profession to process large datasets and build and update their models. So over recent years, I have shifted my focus from econometrics to computer science, completing a computer science degree while working, and honing my skills in model and application development, data management and workflow automation.
I developed our EconData platform, which we are providing for free to researchers and companies to easily access a range of publically available economic data. What sets EconData apart from other data aggregation platforms is that we are the first to adhere to international standards through our use of the Statistical Data and Metadata Exchange (SDMX) technology. This enables data and associated meta-data to be made available in various other data formats (SDMX, JSON, CSV, XLSX) using various interfaces. Check out our macroeconomic dashboard to get a sense of the kind of analysis that the data enables.
Outside of work, I spend a lot of time on my Adventure and Enduro motorbikes.