Title: Machine Learning Engineer
Employer: Meta
Previous Titles: Data Scientist, Aquicore
Matt graduated from the IB Honors program in 2012. After a Fulbright year at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany, he completed a PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton.
After graduation, he worked as a Data Scientist for Aquicore, an IoT (Internet of Things) energy monitoring company, where he helped buildings cut their carbon emissions by optimizing their energy use.
Now, he works as a Machine Learning Engineer for Meta, where he works on the integrity systems that keep Facebook, Instagram, and Threads safe for users, focusing primarily on coordinated networks of fake accounts. He describes his work as a fun blend of coding, machine learning, investigations, and data analysis.
IB gave Matt a deep appreciation for the nuances and complexities of ecosystems, as well as the urgency through which we need to act on climate change. His senior thesis was pivotal in him becoming an independent thinker.
If you would like to talk with Matt about graduate school, data science, sustainability, programming, or statistics, send an email to alumnimentor@sib.illinois.edu. You can learn more about most of these topics at Matt's site https://mattsosna.com, including the posts Getting into grad school for bio, Writing the self contained universe, and Advice nine months out of the college bubble.