Welcome!

My name is Sacha Davis, I'm a recent Computing Science M.Sc. graduate from the University of Alberta. Under Dr. Russell Greiner (and many others) I have investigated the application of machine learning techniques to medical and biological problems, focusing on the overlap between survival prediction, natural language processing, deep learning, and large, unruly datasets. Beyond my technical expertise, I contribute to the teams I'm on with my experience in project management, passion for teaching, and ability to contribute to a vibrant and engaged workplace culture.

Feel free to stay on this page to see the highlights of my professional history, or explore the different pages linked above for more details.

    

  

  

Education

Master of Science, Computing Science (Thesis-Based)

September 2020 – July 2023

University of Alberta | Edmonton, AB 

Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences with Computing Science Minor (with Distinction)    

September 2016 – June 2020 

University of Alberta | Edmonton, AB 

 

Work History

Alberta Health Services

Machine Learning Consultant  (Mar 2024 - Present)


Vector Institute

Project Management Intern  (Sep 2022 - Dec 2022)


Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii)

AI in Genomics Consultant (Feb 2024 - Mar 2024)

Machine Learning Facilitator (Work-Integrated Learning Opportunity)  (Sep 2021 - Jan 2022)

Machine Learning Intern  (May 2021 - Aug 2021)

Graduate Research Fellow, Undergraduate Research Assistant  (Sep 2018 - Apr 2021)


University of Alberta

Graduate Teaching Assistant  (Sep 2021 - Dec 2021)

Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, Department of Computing Science

Research Intern (Jan 2020 - May 2021)

Alberta School of Business, Department of Accounting and Business Analytics


Undergraduate Research Assistant  (May 2020 - Aug 2020)

Faculty of Science, Department of Biological Sciences


Publications and Posters

Kumar N, Skubleny D, Parkes M, Verma R, Davis S, Kumar L, Aissiou A, Greiner R. Learning Individual Survival Models from PanCancer Whole Transcriptome Data. Clinical Cancer Research. 2023 Jul 18.


Davis S, Greiner R.  Improving Hospital Readmission Prediction with Longitudinal Medical Histories and Survival Targets.  Poster Presented at: Upper Bound Conference, Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute. 2023 May 24; Edmonton AB.


Davis S,  Zhang J, Lee I, Rezaei M, Greiner R, McAlister FA, Padwal R. Reading You Like a Book: Aggregated Medical Code Embeddings for Predicting Hospital Readmissions.  Poster Presented at: Reverse Expo, University of Alberta. 2023 Feb 24; Edmonton AB.


Davis S, Zhang J, Lee I, Rezaei M, Greiner R, McAlister FA, Padwal R. Effective hospital readmission prediction models using machine-learned features. BMC health services research. 2022 Dec;22(1):1-0.


Davis S, Aissiou A, Kumar L, Lee L, Greiner R.  Medical Topic Modeling using dLDA on mRNA-Seq Multi-Cancer Datasets.  Poster Presented at: The Global Women in Data Science (WiDS) Conference at the Centre for Health Informatics, Cumming School of Medicine.  2020 Mar 3; Calgary AB. 


Haider H, Hoehn B, Davis S, Greiner R. Effective Ways to Build and Evaluate Individual Survival Distributions. Journal of Machine Learning Research. 2020 Jan 1;21(85):1-63. 


Aissiou A, Davis S, Kumar L, Lee L, Greiner R.  Finding Gene Expression Patterns and Making Predictions for Cancers using Machine Learning.  Poster Presented at: Excellence in Medical Student Research, A Collection of 2019 Medical Student Research from the University of Alberta.  2019 Nov 26; Edmonton AB. 

Extracurricular

Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Student Society

President, Director, Founder (May 2020 - Present)

Founding Vice-President Internal  (Sep 2019 - May 2020)

Computing Science Graduate Students' Association

Member-at-Large  (May 2022 - April 2023)


Eureka: UAlberta’s Science Undergraduate Research Journal

Student Reviewer  (Jan 2019 - Jan 2022)


Ada's Team

Tutor  (Sep 2019 - May 2020)

Lunchtime Mentor  (Jun 2019 - Aug 2019)

Proficiencies

Tools

Python + Modules for Data Science and Machine Learning (NumPy, pandas, Matplotlib, scikit-learn, Keras, TensorFlow, NTLK, etc.)

Tableau

Snowflake

SQL / SQLite

BASH and Linux Environments

Git / GitHub (Including Project Boards for Project Management)

Google Cloud, Google Drive + Google Colaboratory, Compute Canada


  

Concepts

Machine Learning and Deep Learning

Prompt Engineering

Data Visualization and Data Storytelling

Natural Language Processing / Natural Language Understanding

Medical and Agricultural Applications, Bioinformatics

Big Data Processing and Management (Sample-wise, Feature-wise, and Longitudinal) 

Cloud Computing


  

Soft Skills

Leading Small-to-Medium Sized Teams in both Organizational and Technical Settings

Project Management

Interdisciplinary Communication and Mediation, Engaging Effectively with Clients

Creating and Delivering Presentations, Public Speaking

Teaching and Mentorship