Al-Ahmadgaid Asaad

Featured on September 3, 2023

Starting off the month of September is Pinoy Scientist Al-Ahmadgaid Asaad, a statistician and data scientist currently working as the manager for Advanced Analytics at Johnson & Johnson.

Al received his first degree in Statistics from Mindanao State University – Iligan Institute of Technology. He then moved to the University of the Philippines Diliman to take up his Masters in Statistics, specializing in using Bayesian inference for big data and deep learning models. While there, he worked at both the Philippine Statistics Authority as a statistical specialist and at the Philippine Genome Center as a research associate, where he was part of a team that developed a model for estimating the absorbed radiation of a patient based on radiation-induced dicentric chromosomal aberrations.

After graduating, he worked as a data scientist in a number of companies, such as Digital Genomix (DiGenomix), NeuralMechanics, UnionBank of the Philippines, and Aboitiz Data Innovation in Singapore, where he was a senior data scientist and manager.

As of the moment, Al is at Johnson & Johnson, where he leads a team of data scientists that deal with volume/demand forecasting and possess automation, among others. His recent research work has focused on using statistics to forecast storm frequency in the country. He is also back at UP Diliman taking up a Master of Arts in Islamic Studies where he is exploring Arabic natural language processing under computational linguistics.

Some fun facts about Al:

1. He can swim anywhere in the ocean without any gear.
2. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer! Al befriended his elementary and high school bullies by fighting them himself.
3. When he was separated from his elementary barkada in his 1st year of high school because they were in higher sections, he studied hard to improve his grades, becoming valedictorian and getting promoted to section A from section D in his second year.