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Eric Ma

Principal Data Scientist at Moderna Therapeutics

Eric Ma is a Senior Principal Data Scientist at Moderna Therapeutics, where he leads the Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research team. His role focuses on accelerating scientific research and innovation, particularly in areas such as mRNA design, protein engineering, and lipid nanoparticle chemistry.123 He has been with Moderna since July 2021, initially serving as a Principal Data Scientist before being promoted to his current position in April 2024.34

Educational Background

Eric earned his PhD in Biological Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), defending his thesis in 2017. Prior to that, he completed various research roles, including as a Junior Specialist and Graduate Student at MIT's Voigt Lab.123

Professional Experience

Before joining Moderna, Eric worked at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (NIBR) from September 2017 to June 2021. There, he focused on data science and statistical learning, employing Bayesian methods to enhance drug discovery processes. His experience also includes serving as an Insight Health Data Fellow in 2017.134

Contributions and Open Source Work

Eric is an active contributor to the open-source community, having developed tools such as pyjanitor, a Python library for data cleaning, and nxviz, a visualization package for NetworkX. He is also part of the core development teams for NetworkX and PyMC.24 His commitment to education is evident through his involvement in teaching workshops and seminars on machine learning and deep learning.34

Personal Philosophy

Eric's personal motto reflects his belief in responsibility and contribution: "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked," a quote from the Gospel of Luke.24

Overall, Eric Ma's work at Moderna exemplifies a blend of advanced data science techniques with practical applications in biomedical research, contributing significantly to the field of medicine through innovative approaches.

Highlights

Aug 28 · linkedin

Continuing a theme from a previous post I wrote, I have been curious about how multi-modality models handle missing inputs. 🤔 My latest blog post dives into the ESM3 model, a multi-modality neural network that elegantly addresses this challenge. I explore the model's architecture, input handling, and the intriguing method of embedding summation. Curious to see how this works in practice? Check out the full post here: https://bit.ly/3Xm0wfG . I'd love to hear your thoughts on this approach. Do you think such models could revolutionize our understanding in other fields as well? Feel free to share your views, comment, or share the post with others who might find this fascinating! #ai #machinelearning #datascience #neuralnetworks #esm3

Aug 21 · linkedin

Ever wondered how to streamline your Python development and data science workflows with a single tool? 🤔 I've recently explored a game-changer in package management: pixi. In my latest blog post, I dive into how pixi has transformed my setup, offering a unified solution for environment management, package installation, and much more. Whether you're a software developer or a data scientist, you'll find valuable insights on making your computational environments more reproducible and efficient. Check out the full story and let me know your thoughts! Read the full post here. I'd love to hear your feedback, so please like, comment, or share if you find it useful! #python #datascience #softwaredevelopment #pixi https://lnkd.in/e4HXf5ux

Related Questions

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Eric Ma
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Experience

Principal Data Scientist at Moderna
Senior Expert II/Investigator III and Investigator II/Senior Expert I at Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR)

Location

Greater Boston