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kaylah176/README.md

Hi, I'm Kayla

M.S. Applied Data Science student at USC | Graduate Research Assistant @ USC Information Sciences Institute (ISI) Working on deep learning, knowledge graphs, MCP integrations, and agentic AI pipelines. Previously an NSF REU researcher building a U-Net3+ CNN for tornado detection on radar data. Open to full-time entry-level roles in data science, ML engineering, and AI/software engineering.


Featured Coursework

Applied ML for real-world problems, from classical statistical learning through deep learning.

Homework Techniques Dataset
KNN Classification EDA, Classification, KNN Vertebral Column
Regression Linear/Multiple/KNN Regression, Hypothesis Testing Combined Cycle Power Plant
Time Series Classification I Time-domain Feature Extraction, Bootstrapping AReM
Time Series Classification II Binary/Multiclass Classification, Logistic Regression AReM
Decision Trees Cost-Complexity Pruning, Ridge, LASSO, Boosting Acute Inflammations, Communities & Crime
Tree-Based Methods Random Forest, SMOTE, XGBoost APS Failure at Scania Trucks
Support Vector Machines SVM, K-Means, Monte-Carlo Simulation Anuran Calls (MFCCs)

Final Project: Transfer learning for image classification — built a 20-species bird classifier using TensorFlow, Keras, OpenCV, EfficientNetB0, and VGG16.

➡️ View the repo


Graduate-level, systems-heavy data mining course centered on mining massive datasets at scale with Apache Spark (pySpark).

Core areas covered:

  • Distributed computing: MapReduce, HDFS-style file systems, Spark RDDs/DataFrames
  • Frequent pattern mining: Apriori-style association rule mining at scale
  • Similarity search: Shingling, MinHashing, Locality-Sensitive Hashing (LSH)
  • Recommender systems: content-based & collaborative filtering, matrix factorization
  • Graph mining: social network analysis, PageRank-style link analysis
  • Streaming algorithms: Bloom filters, distinct-element counting, moment estimation
  • Clustering at scale and web-scale ad-matching

Includes 6 pySpark assignments plus a final data mining competition project (recommendation system, built end-to-end on real large-scale data).

➡️ View the repo


Graduate Deep Learning coursework building neural network fundamentals from scratch rather than treating frameworks as black boxes — automatic differentiation, backpropagation, CNN-based image classification, and physics-informed neural networks (PINNs).

Assignment Techniques Result
CNN Image Classification Custom CNN, dropout, training/eval loops 59% test accuracy on CIFAR-10
Automatic Differentiation Forward/reverse-mode autodiff Gradients verified against PyTorch autograd
Neural Network from Scratch Manual backprop, L2 regularization Gradient checks matched analytical derivations
Physics-Informed Neural Networks PINN, boundary + PDE residual loss Absolute error 1e-4–5e-3 vs. analytic solution

➡️ View the repo


Tech I work with

Python PyTorch / TensorFlow pySpark scikit-learn SQL Jupyter

Let's connect

Open to data science, ML engineering, and AI/software engineering roles across the Bay Area, LA, and NYC.

Pinned Loading

  1. vivianaalba/dsci551-project vivianaalba/dsci551-project Public

    A data-driven web application that parses, filters, groups, aggregates, and joins CSV datasets using custom Python functions.

    Python

  2. USC-DSCI-552 USC-DSCI-552 Public

    Jupyter Notebook

  3. Credit-Risk-Classification Credit-Risk-Classification Public

    Objective: Address the classification problem behind predicting credit risk

    Jupyter Notebook

  4. Project_3 Project_3 Public

    Project 3: Tokenization and Real Estate

    Python

  5. Solidity_SmartContracts Solidity_SmartContracts Public

    Objective: Create and deploy a Solidity smart contract that allows two users to access a joint savings account

    Solidity

  6. DSCI553 DSCI553 Public

    Python