James De La Torre

I have bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering from MIT.  Since I graduated back in 1996 I've been working for Intel Corporation in Arizona.  I've worked in the yield analysis group of Intel's largest factory for most of that time, with a focus on data analysis systems.  I have many years experience programming in SAS, but for the past 2 years I've been using mostly Python (ironically, I will be taking the Python course).  I spend a lot of my time managing our data warehouse and writing and maintaining database loaders.  I have experience with data mining and many machine learning methods, but I signed up for MIDS because I want to learn the latest and greatest techniques with full scientific rigor.  I am married with 2 sons--a 20 year old who is in the Army, and a 9 year old who is an aspiring gymnast.  I enjoy fishing, cooking, and playing music (I play keyboard, accordion, and mandolin).  My biggest concern with the MIDS program is how it will affect my family time, but my wonderful wife is extremely supportive.  My second biggest concern is that my brain may be rusty and not as supple and pliable as it used to be, but I'm sure it'll all work out.  I look forward to getting to know you all!