Alec Stashevsky

Applied Scientist // Researcher // R Developer

About Me

I am an applied scientist and researcher who builds large scale machine learning applications. Before that, I spent time as an economic consultant in the finance and energy industries. I am passionate about interdisciplinary research that engages multiple paradigms. I care about econometrics, machine learning, anthropology, and research that uses data holistically to push back against siloed analytics.

Currently, I spend my time teaching machines how to read and understand receipts through a combination of computer vision, natural language processing, and graph machine learning techniques. When I am not thinking about graphs and transformers you can find me snapping shots on my Yashica T4 Super D, hiking, and making pottery.

Interests
  • Geometric Deep Learning
  • Inequality and Development
  • Occult Economies
  • Place-making, Migration, Mobility
  • Spatial Politics
  • Anthropology
  • Decarbonization
  • Securitization
Education
  • B.A., Mathematics-Economics

    Reed College

Publications

Experience

 
 
 
 
 
Fetch
Applied Scientist, Tech Lead
Oct 2022 – Present Los Angeles
Develop world-class document AI technology powering the core of the Fetch app used to extract information from +10 million receipts in real-time every day. Fetch’s largest product launch to date.

Pre-training and fine-tuning of large language models (LLMs), vision encoder-decoders, and graph neural networks.

Build out data labelling and collection efforts from the ground-up to support computer vision and large language modelling efforts.

Tech lead for team of 15+ scientists.
 
 
 
 
 
Fetch
Research Data Scientist
Oct 2021 – Oct 2022 Los Angeles
Document AI and Graph ML
 
 
 
 
 
NERA Economic Consulting
Associate Analyst
Sep 2020 – Sep 2021 New York City
Look inside the books of some of the largest financial institutions in the world to estimate damages and predict the performance of complex financial instruments leading to the largest and most severe banking crises, securities fraud, and market-meltdowns humans have witnessed.

Build probabilistic financial models using advanced techniques including Markov chain Monte Carlo methods, random matrix theory applications, and stationary time-series forecasting.

Identify, explain, and value litigation involving mortgage-backed securities (RMBS), collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), swaps, and other derivatives underpinning trillions of dollars in assets.

Provide evidence and economic investigation for Fortune 500 companies, SEC, DOJ, and FINRA.
 
 
 
 
 
The Cadmus Group
Research Analyst
Nov 2019 – Sep 2020 Portland, OR
Design and evaluation of demand-side management programs, including a $600k+ randomized control trial on smart thermostat direct load-control.

Forecast electric vehicle diffusion, demand elasticity, and electrification for budgeting hundreds of millions of dollars under diverse energy industry clients’ management.

Design difference-in-difference models, demand-elasticity programs, and causal inference mechanisms to provide gold-standard reporting to regulators and operators responsible for most of the United States energy supply.
 
 
 
 
 
Kyrgies
Data Scientist
Oct 2019 – Jul 2020
Lead a project investigating optimal advertising strategies for an online retailer by supplementing web analytics and operations resources to perform novel Geo-spatial analysis, market research, and ultimately lead generation.
 
 
 
 
 
KWM Wealth Advisory
Data Scientist Intern
Jul 2019 – Oct 2020 Pasadena, CA
Build internal dashboards for a boutique wealth advisory firm using R and Shiny to help advisors aggregate and contextualize regulatory stances during bear-markets.

Certifications

Coursera
Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs)
See certificate
Coursera
Machine Learning Engineering for Production (MLOps)
See certificate
Coursera
Machine Learning
See certificate
Coursera
Foundations for Big Data Analysis with SQL (with Honors)
See certificate
Coursera
Analyzing Big Data with SQL (with Honors)
See certificate
DataCamp
Introduction to Spark with sparklyr in R
See certificate
DataCamp
Support Vector Machines in R
See certificate
DataCamp
Introduction to Scala
See certificate

Tools I Use

Python
Python
Rlogo
R
snowflake
Snowflake (SQL)
pytorch
PyTorch
pyg
PyTorch Geometric
huggingface
Hugging Face
aws
Amazon Web Services
docker
Docker
git
Git
stata
Stata
sas
SAS
microsoftexcel
Microsoft Excel

Contact