Alfonso Barajas Cervantes
About me
August 2023, PhD in CS at Northeastern University
I have recently graduated from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, which is regarded as one of the top universities in the country. During the last three semesters of my undergraduate studies, I had the opportunity to immerse myself in a research project involving Time Series Analysis along with Topological Data Analysis Tools to predict the future trends of Cryptocurrency prices. This was an exciting and challenging project that required me to apply my knowledge to develop an accurate prediction model.
I am proud to have been a member of the All-Student team that competed against over 70 teams from 33 different countries, and even more proud to have contributed significantly to our team's success. Specifically, my contribution to the project involved constructing an LSTM neural network to predict new coronavirus cases and deaths per country, which helped our team secure a well-deserved 3rd place in the UN Youth Hackathon . This early experience in research not only gave me the chance to apply my knowledge to real-world problems but also fueled my passion for research and my eagerness to pursue further research opportunities in the future.
Since Fall 2022, I am a Ph.D. Student at Northeastern University. Currently working under the supervision of Dr. Predrag Radivojac. My research lies at the intersection of machine learning and computational biology.
Achievements
- Winner Contetant UN Youth Hackathon (Dec 2021):
Mission: Create solutions to fast track progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) using data.
Certificate of Achievement: 3rd Place :3rd place out of +70 teams from 33 countries in 4 regions in the world
Certificate of Achievement: All-student team: The winning team was composed entirely of students at the time of the contest.
Certificate of Participation - Winner Contestant ICPC (Oct 2021):
The International Collegiate Programming Contest provided me of skills how to work in team to solve algorithmic problems under pressure.
Certificate of Achievement
Results: Top 10% - Advance to ICPC Regionals in MX, Zacatecas 2022 - Scholarship SAS LATAM 2021 (Jul 2021)
Awarded a competitive scholarship which includes live mentorship from renowned SAS experts. The scholarship comes with a generous fund allocation of up to $9,250 USD for live mentoring on five Data Science/ML courses.
Some courses taken: Applied Analytics using SAS Enterprise Miner; Sas Visual Statistics on SAS Viya: Interactive Model Building
- Winner of Talent Award of the University Bachelor: Research (June 2018)
- Gold Medal/First Places in Mathematical Olympiads - State Level (2016-2018)
(2018) Won Gold Medal in the 7th Knowledge University Olympiad in the field of Mathematics. UNAM, MX
(2016-2017) First place in the 31st and 30th Mathematical Olympiad of Mexico City. Both participations required me to take a full preparation and rigorous exams where I went until the last final stage Pre-selection of the Mexico City team in the Mathematical National Contest. This i did it while achieving high performance in High School, being one of the best in my generation.
(2016) Won Bronze Medal in the 6th Knowledge University Olympiad in the field of Mathematics. UNAM, MX
Certificate of Achievement - Within First places in Children's Knowledge Olympiad - State Level (2015)
In order to secure a scholarship from BBVA Bancomer for my high school education, I had to take a rigorous exam in ninth grade. This exam was administered to approximately 1,000 students, who had won the Children's Knowledge Olympiad (2011-12). Out of those 1,000 students, only around 50-70 were ultimately awarded the scholarship.
Certificate of Achievement - 2nd place in Mathematical Olympiad - National Level (2013)
I earned a silver medal at the national level in the "XIV Competencia Cotorra de Matemáticas" a mathematical contest designed for students under the age of 12.
Certificate of Achievement - 1st place in Children's Knowledge Olympiad Contest - State level (2012)
As a sixth-grade student, I took multiple rigorous exams that were administered to students across the country. The number of students that took the exam were approximately 2.2 million students. I achieved the highest score in the State of Mexico, which is the most populous state out of 32 Mexico's states. As a result, I was awarded a scholarship from BBVA Bancomer to fund my secondary school education. Video
Certificate of Achievement
After a rigorous selection process that included the most competitive high schools in Mexico, I was honored with a prestigious recognition in Scientific Research. This distinction was awarded to me for my contribution to promoting and generating scientific research in the natural sciences, Mathematics, sharing knowledge, and presenting at institutional, state, and national levels. My journey towards this accomplishment began at the age of 11 and continued until I turned 18. (UNAM News)
Certificate of AchievementProjects
- Research Forecasting Finance Time Series with TDA | pytorch, giotto-tda, statsmodels, scikit-learn | (Aug 2022)
- Understand one of the state of the art algorithms to forecast time series within Cryptocurrencies.
- Developing a robust methodology to forecast using using Topological Data Analysis
- Compare different deep learning and classical architectures for time series forecasting
- COVID-19 Prediction | pytorch , pmdarima ,statsmodels, TSPred(R) | (Jun 2022)
- Used LSTM architecture in UN Youth Hackathon and won a 3rd place against data scientists around the world
- Provide of scientific understanding of ML-AI methods vs Classical methods for TS Forecasting
- Predictions and Performance Metrics comparison gainst LSTM, ARIMA, and ARIMA with Kalman Filter
- Found that LSTM fits better for both Confirmed Cases and Deaths data for most countries.
- Cryptocurrencies Critical Transition: Detecting it in Time Series with TDA | giotto-tda, pandas, numpy | (Dec 2021)
- Replicating results of scientific paper to detect critical transitions in Cryptocurrencies.
- Understanding the robust method of the alarm using TDA - Topological Data analysis along with K-means
- Found that using this visual alarm is efficient to detect critical transitions in volatile seasons
- Stock Market and Sentiment Analysis for Investing Based in Bitcoin | Btalib, nltk, pyspark | (Jun 2021)
- Comprehend technical analysis and risk in trading topredict price direction
- Prediction along with indicators from NLP and Sentiment Analysis from large histocal dataset of tweets
- Found that serious news instead of tweets, would be a better indicator to predict direction.
- E-commerce business project using CRISP methodology | Seaborn, Matplotlib, Pandas | (Jun 2021)
- Focused on data cleaning and building forecasting models of demand of products
- Make prediction on the delivery of products in relationship with dimension and price factors
- Propose techniques to handle and avoid errors on data.
- Optimization Cost-Nutrition in Raw Vegan diet | Pandas, Numpy | (Feb 2021)
- Designed a Mathematical Model that provides an efficient solution.
- Knapsack 0/1 was the implemented algorithm with dynamic programming
- Given a limited budget , provided the list of fruits, vegetables and oilseeds, the output is the best combination possible that maximizes nutritional content
- Polynomial Approximation and Weather Forecast | Numpy, Pandas | (Nov 2020)
- Implemented a efficient solution using Cholesky Method to give a polynomial formula of degree 3 that fits the best with the data.
- Proposed a segmentation of 3, 5, 10 year period and with seasons
- Deal with large data sets and figure out how to load it to work with.
- Neo4J: PROFECO | Py2neo | (Jun 2021)
- Develop a graph database consistent with business rules
- Frontend made with Python with motor search connected to Neo4J
- Design an application that allows certain queries related to products and stores
- MongoDB: NYC Bike Ride System | Pymongo,pprint | (May 2021)
- Design and develop a document database consistent with business rules
- Load data using batch method due to large amount of data.
- Propose trips that full fill parameters like time or that the user choose.
- Cassandra: Book platform | Pandas, Cassandra | (May 2021)
- Design and develop a column-family database consistent with business rules.
- The books platform let the user add information about their favorite books, etc.
- The admin of the app could make queries and basic statistics on it.
- Redis: Url shortener | Redis, Requests | (Apr 2021)
- Design and develop a key-value database consistent with business rules.
- System would support user management such as create new account, delete, etc.
- User could add urls to wishlist and categorize it within topics.
Sharing Mathematical Knowledge
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DS 5220: Supervised Machine Learning and Learning Theory (Fall 23')
Teaching Assistant in a Data Science Graduate level course at Northeastern Unviersity. Help master student learn mathematical and computational concepts within Machine Learning Theory during Office Hours each week during the semester. Average weekly time spend close to 20 hours. Grade students’s assignments and projects related to machine learning. Guide them towards a successful learning experience in Machine Learning
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Training middle school students for Mathematical Olympiad (Fall 19')
Taught combinatorics, number theory and geometry to middle school students. This was part of a session of 4 hours of training to participate in final stages on Middle School Mathematical Olympiad
Create a series of exercises to solve during in-person session training along with the young talented students.
News | Example of third training session -
Founded MateABC and MateABC English (2019-2020)
Founded MateABC (in English as well) to promote and divulge Mathematical content to be more accesible. I created a Facebook page where I created a community up to 3,800 followers interested in Math solving skills, history of mathematics and mathematical challenges open to whoever wanted to participate from Latin American countries.
Created 50 videos sharing Modern Geometry, Number Theory, Calculus concepts and showed ways to improve mathematical thinking through series of videos with math challenges. Both videos are in English and its version in Spanish. MateABC English (241 subscribers) and MateABC (978 subscribers)
Workshop given
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How to solve problems in math contests? (2018)
I gave a workshop in my final year of high school to classmates from 9th to 12th grade. There I was able to introduce techniques in how to tackle problems in math contests, as It is one of my hard skills. I was able to encourage young people to participate more in this type of contests.
Evidence of Participation
Workshop attended
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Critical Assessment of Genome Interpretation - (2023) - Boston, MA
Attended workshop where leading researchers talked about the innovation and progress done and to be done towards shaping the future of computational Genome Interpretation. Keynote Speakers: Vence Bonham Jr. , National Human Genome Research Institute ,Wendy Chung, Boston Children's Hospital , Heidi Rehm, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvad -
International Masterclass: Hands on particle physics (2018) - University City, Mexico City
Certificate of Participation
During high school, I had the opportunity to participate in an introduction to research program on the fundamentals of matter and forces at a particle sciences research center affiliated with UNAM in Mexico. Performed experiments on real data from real experiments at CERN. I was able to participate in an online discussion with researchers in the field of particle physics about the results from the experiment.
Education
| 2022-2027 (expected) | Ph.D. in Computer Science at Northeastern University Relevant Coursework: Machine Learning, Algorithms, Research Methods in Human Computer Interaction, Web Development |
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| 2018-2022 | BSc in Data Science-Mathematics at National Autonomous University of Mexico Relevant Coursework: Deep Learning, Machine Learning, NLP, Time Series, Data Mining, Probability and Statistics, Relational and NoSQL Databases, Discrete Mathematics, Big Data I and II, Calculus 1-IV, Linear Algebra I-II, |
| 2015-2018 | National Preparatory School 9 "Pedro de Alba" |