I'm Dawson Ren. I just finished a master's in Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences at Northwestern, and I'm looking for data scientist, forward deployed engineer, technical product manager, or any other roles that are close to the customer and focused on data-driven decision-making.
Chicago, IL · Applied AI/ML · Operations · Product
Reinsurance Group of America · 2026
Sole engineer on a tool that tests predictive and AI models for discrimination. Idea to production in ten weeks, now rolling out to a 70-person global data science organization.
Northwestern University · 2025–2026
A local feature attribution method that reduces the variance of individual explanations by up to 5x compared to SHAP when variables are highly correlated.
Northwestern University · 2024–2025
Amazon's free shipping threshold incentives customers to order up to the threshold, which biases the data you'd use to set the threshold. We develop an algorithm that corrects for this.
Built and validated a multiclass XGBoost classifier on 3M+ oil samples, improving absolute F1 by 15 points over the rules-based system used at 70+ fluid analysis labs worldwide.
Learned high-performance GPU simulation from zero to model silicon grain boundaries for next-generation thermoelectric materials, supported by the Predictive Sciences and Engineering Design Graduate Program.
Designed and taught eight ML lab sessions for Northwestern's MS in Machine Learning and Data Science, a statistics bootcamp for the incoming IEMS PhD cohort, and educational tools for Kellogg's MBA Operations Management course.
On the difference between explaining something correctly and explaining it both correctly and convincingly.
Born in New Jersey, grew up in St. Louis, transplant to Chicago. I've recently found myself returning to the intersection of software and decision-making, which is what made me excited about studying Industrial Engineering.
Outside of work I enjoy running by Lake Michigan, playing guitar, and cooking for my friends. Feel free to send me an email! Also open to grabbing coffee for those in the Chicagoland area.