Ever wondered what Data + Artificial Intelligence (AI) ‘experts’ do? Interested in how data and AI powers are making the bank safer and simpler?
This August, we’re bringing NAB’s in-house Data + AI Month outside with a ‘Day in the Life’ series that explores these futuristic roles at NAB.
Here is the first look into this world with NAB’s Principal Data Scientist, Adrian Ly.
My alarm goes off…
I normally wake up around 6:30am and go for a 30min run around the park – I find running in the morning helps me feel more concentrated throughout the day at work. I’d then go through my emails and meetings and prioritise the work for the day!
I am responsible for…
A data scientist is like a detective who uses data to solve problems. I use both data and algorithms to improve NAB’s systems and customer experience, including personalising mobile app notifications so that customers will actually find them useful rather than just spam.
I got my job…
I studied marketing at university but quickly discovered that I wasn’t very good at it so decided to pursue a Masters and a PhD in machine learning. Machine learning is basically teaching a computer to learn from experience. Just as you learn to recognise patterns and make decisions on what you’ve seen before, a computer uses data to learn and improve its performance over time.
My typical day…
I typically have two types of ‘days’ – the first type are days where I am focused on the people-side of things where I am speaking to stakeholders, my team and colleagues to understand the business problems and generate hypotheses. The second type is coding heavy days where I’m focused on validating the hypotheses and solving the problems (for example, wrangling billions of rows of data) using data and algorithms.
The most impressive thing I’ve done to help customers…
We’ve developed technology that helps to personalise notifications customers get in their NAB app. This means customers receive less junk mail and more helpful info on features they likely need. This could be notifications on NAB’s “travel notification feature” or “savings goal feature”.
Most important skill for this career…
Being inquisitive and willing to learn is the most important skill for this career path. The field itself is changing very rapidly, there are new technologies and techniques being introduced almost every day.
Plan B…
If I wasn’t a data scientist, I would have loved to have been a video game designer!
Adrian’s story is part of NAB’s annual Data + AI Month, hosted by the Data & Analytics Guild. It’s an in-house series of data centric events that showcase the capabilities at NAB through learning and development sessions, panel discussions and partner demonstrations.
