By: Mishalynn Brown
Students embark on numerous career paths after college. The DMC works to ensure that students are armed with a set of skills that apply to their future endeavors. We were happy to catch up with Jimmy Mendez, an alumnus of the DMC who worked within the Data Analytics Group. Joining the Center in 2020 at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mendez gained first-hand experience in handling real-world data.
Mendez explored how the salaries of K-12 employees have changed over the years while working on a project entitled “The K-12 Wage Gap in Florida: Economic Implications and Future Outlook.” “That was the first time I thought of a question then ran numbers to find out, yes, salary rates aren’t keeping up with inflation,” Mendez explained. Using real-world data and applications, he became comfortable examining data that meant something to the world around him. Dr. Taylor and Dr. Staley’s support of interns doing what interests them created a solid foundation for producing intriguing and exceptional work.
Following graduation, Mendez interned with organizations such as Midcontinent Independent System Operator and Amazon!
As an employee at Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), he observed changes in energy supply and demand to determine what caused energy prices to spike. MISO specifically targeted price changes within the city of Caramel, Indiana, but hopes to expand its analysis north to Canada. MISO works in a high-security setting, thus making the suburban environment of Caramel, Indiana, an ideal location.
With Amazon, Mendez worked on the Prime Econ Team, tackling questions regarding customer spending. His Team’s main focus was comparing shipping speed with customer spending, and how those two factors related. Amazon exposed Mendez to hundreds of terabytes of data–truly big data. Previously, while working at the DMC, he had only worked with one terabyte of data at the most. Mendez explained that “Amazon is a very data-rich environment, and I had never worked on that scale, so picking up new skills was very important for that role.”
Mendez completed research at other institutions such as Princeton University. There, he took on a data construction role, gathering information to include in a data set that analyzed how different schools match their students. This process of grabbing data from the Internet was interesting as he never considered where the datasets came from. Mendez found this side of the industry compelling despite it being much different than the analytic space he was used to. At the MIT Sloan School of Management, Mendez worked alongside three professors on datasets varying from pharmaceutical companies to electric vehicle sales. This experience further exposed him to even more varied datasets and expanded his understanding of the data analytics world.
Reflecting on his undergraduate career at Florida State University, Mendez attributes the DMC and his professor mentors to his success. He worked extensively with Professor Mikhail Dmitriev at FSU, who taught him the valuable lesson of looking at the bigger picture whenever he is stuck on a problem he is trying to solve. Mendez finds that data-driven applications are, “One of the best ways to get to the ground truth of whatever you’re studying.” Looking towards the future, Mendez hopes to stay within the realm of data analytics, saying, “No matter where it is, as long as I find the questions interesting, it’ll be intellectually satisfying for me.”
Now, Mendez is an Empirical Research Analyst at Harvard Law School, honing his skills with SQL in a prestigious academic environment.
The DMC is proud of our alumni, and Jimmy Mendez is a testament to what a DMC intern can do with the experience they gain here later on in their careers!
