During my early semesters as an engineering student, I took Object-Oriented Programming I and II. These courses were taught in Java, where I learned the basics of the language, OOP concepts, testing, and took my first steps in graphical user interface development using Java Swing.
During my undergraduate studies in Industrial Engineering, I took several courses related to statistics and data analysis, such as probabilistic models, experimental design, and simulation. In these courses, we studied statistical theory, but we also used R to build the models. In R, we worked with a package called Shiny, which allowed us to create small web apps to interact with the models. I found this fascinating because one of the biggest challenges I faced when building models was finding a user-friendly way to present them to someone without a technical or programming background.
As I was nearing graduation, I completed an internship at Mazda as a Data Analyst. After finishing the internship, I decided that I wanted to focus on programming. For this reason, I started learning Python on my own to prepare for the job market. To evaluate my learning, I chose to develop a machine learning model for my thesis, which predicted the score on a national exam based on the socioeconomic variables of the test-taker. The thesis was a success, earning a 4.5/5 final grade, and validating my knowledge in a new technology: Python.
Once I started working as an Operations Analyst at Close Up, I encountered a challenge similar to the one I faced in university: how to create appealing and secure interfaces to present my analyses, dashboards, and models. Because of this, I decided to learn web development with React. I already had some foundational knowledge of HTML and CSS because the Shiny package in R used them abstractly for its web apps, and I had also experimented with Dash and Streamlit in Python, which follow a similar principle. Additionally, my programming background helped me quickly adapt to JavaScript. I was able to apply everything I learned in my previous job, where I collaborated with another developer to complete projects like the ones showcased in this portfolio.
One of the projects I’m most proud of was a full-stack application with roles and login functionality that allowed admin users to assign Power BI dashboards to specific end users. This required not only handling authentication and authorization, but also learning how to work with the Power BI API to manage permissions and embed dashboards into a web page. The project was so successful that a couple of pharmaceutical labs contacted me to develop a similar application for their projects. While working at Close Up, and with their full authorization, I also secured some side jobs related to web development.