March Student Highlight of the Month: Felix Müller
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/felixbigdata/
Twitter: @FelixBigData
Tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from, what languages do you speak, and what did you previously study?
Guten Tag zusammen (English: Hello everyone)! I am from Germany and in the last couple of years I have lived in the beautiful city Munich, which you hopefully know from our famous Oktoberfest. But it has a lot more to offer than beer, such as castles, parks and great food. As the capital of the state Bavaria it is home to the prime minister and lots of international companies such as Allianz, BMW and Siemens. I studied Management & Technology, a degree providing a broad overview of business, finance and computer science at Technical University Munich. My mother tongue is German but I also speak English, and due to an exchange semester in Monterrey, Mexico, and my master in Madrid some Spanish. Because in my last year of studies I focused on Finance & Computer Science, I also know a few programming languages such as Java, R & Python ☺ In my spare time I love to cook and go to bars or restaurants with my friends and my girlfriend. I really enjoy hiking and travelling to different cities around the world too.
Do you have any work experience? If yes, do tell us about it.
I come directly from my undergraduate degree to IE. However, in Germany it is very common to work before and/or during your studies in the form of Co Op positions of internships. I had the opportunity to work for six different employers in the area of banking, consulting and FinTech. Currently, I am a Data Scientist at the Munich based treefin AG which offers a personal finance management app and I analyze payments remotely from Madrid.
What drew you to Big Data?
When I was studying abroad, I really enjoyed the databases class at ITESM, Mexico where we set up a small database for patient data. It was so fast and easy to get it up and running and then write a few simple queries to analyze the data. After I had told my professor that I am interested in the field and would like to do a related master, she recommended me to look for graduate degrees in Business Analytics. The more I researched about the topic, the more fascinated I became because of the great opportunities arising for the analysis of Big Data. Luckily, I had the opportunity to write my bachelor thesis about the analysis of payments with machine learning and the R programming language. This encouraged me even more to go to IE and explore the topic further.
Are you pursuing any extra-curricular activity/activities? If yes, how does it help you as a Big Data student?
Apart from the great bars and the nature such as la Pedriza (a mountain close to Madrid) or parks, I really enjoy my engagement for the IE Big Data Club. Last month we organized the “Data Disrupt” event, where we invited business professionals from companies in the FinTech & Healthcare sector to present latest trends to the student and alumni community of IE. We also plan other events such as a data-hackathon or keynotes from founders of big data startups. But what I like doing the most is teaching my fellow students the R programming language during the R recap sessions of the club. In our biweekly meetings, I present a few concepts about questions students have sent the club in advance. It feels great to help people understand a homework or a problem that they have been trying to solve for several hours by presenting a few concepts I would apply myself.
What are your short and long-term professional goals after the Masters?
I have accepted an offer to become a Senior Data Scientist at my current employer treefin AG after graduation. The position really fits my goals because I like to work on different topics related to Big Data, such as the data science for many different areas itself, but also the development of infrastructure. Moreover, my colleagues at treefin AG are experienced in the field, and I look forward to learning from and with them. In a few years I would like to lead a team of big data professionals for a company seeing IT as a main competitive differentiator or even fund a technology startup myself. I can also see myself teaching part-time about big data related topics. However, due to the fact that the industry is changing at a fast pace, I think there will be a lot of interesting opportunities arising that are hard to foresee right now.
How would you define IE Master’s experience and what do you value most?
I chose IE because of the practical and entrepreneurial spirit. We have lots of professors that do not only teach, but mainly work for a company or are self-employed. They can provide great insights of their industries and how the tools we are learning are applied in practice. The entire program contains a high amount of group assignments, which are helpful because we learn how to work with people from around the world and from different backgrounds. Also, my fellows are highly motivated and you will always find someone who can help you with your problem because he / she has already solved it. But my personal highlight is Madrid, because the city is so beautiful and definitely underestimated! For a German it is awesome to have 25 degrees Celsius in early March and meet your friends at a rooftop to enjoy a Saturday evening ☺.
What would be your advice for future students?
Practice programming on real examples! You can only understand concepts be applying them to a problem that you are interested in solving. For example, download one of the most famous datasets, the wine quality data, from the UCI Machine Learning Repository and try to predict the quality of a wine. Also, there are tons of good videos and websites out there that you can use to learn about R, SQL, Python and statistics for free or a reasonable price. With this preparation you will definitely be able to get the most value out of your experience at IE. You will love it! I am looking forward to seeing you there at one of the IE Big Data Club events that I hope to attend as an alumnus as well ☺ And finally, go to the club events or even become a coordinator to maintain the high quality of activities available!