Ehsan Kourkchi, PhD

Ehsan Kourkchi, PhD has a diverse work experience in the field of data science and research. Ehsan currently serves as the Chief Data Scientist at SensiML Corp, starting in 2021. Prior to this, they worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at Utah Valley University, starting in July 2021. In this role, they focused on automating the process of measuring distances of elliptical galaxies observed by the Hubble Space Telescope. Ehsan developed a pipeline to process galaxy images and extract the Surface Brightness Fluctuation (SBF) signal, aiming to minimize human supervision and improve signal quality.

From 2020 to 2021, Dr. Kourkchi worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. In this position, they developed machine learning applications to forecast meteorological time series, specifically focusing on terrestrial evapotranspiration and rainfall. Ehsan built a Bayesian machine learning model based on Gaussian Process Regression methodology, using an auto-regressive approach to predict values in the time series.

During the same period at the University of Hawaii, they also served as a Research Assistant for the Cosmicflows-4 Program. In this role, they developed software and tools to assemble and analyze the Cosmicflows-4 distance catalog, which is the largest catalog of galaxy distances ever created.

Additionally, in 2020, Dr. Kourkchi participated in the Springboard Machine Learning Career Track program. As part of this program, they worked on a project involving galaxy image classification. The objective was to automatically determine the inclination of spiral galaxies using their images, providing accurate results comparable to human analysis.

Through their various roles, Dr. Kourkchi has demonstrated expertise in machine learning, data analysis, and automation, particularly in the field of astrophysics and meteorology.

Ehsan Kourkchi, PhD, completed their Bachelor's degree in an unspecified field before pursuing a PhD in Astronomy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Ehsan'seducation history further includes completing the Machine Learning Engineering Career Track at Springboard. In addition to their formal education, Ehsan has obtained several certifications, including the Machine Learning Engineering Career Track from Springboard, Introduction to PySpark from DataCamp, and SQL Fundamentals Track from DataCamp. Ehsan has also completed various online courses, including those offered by Coursera, such as Convolutional Neural Networks, Deep Learning Specialization, Improving Deep Neural Networks, Neural Networks and Deep Learning, Sequence Models, Structuring Machine Learning Projects, Introduction to TensorFlow for Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning, and Machine Learning. Furthermore, Ehsan has completed courses on Practical Machine Learning and The Data Scientist's Toolbox from John Hopkins University and has earned verified certificates for Data Science and Analytics in Context, Enabling Technologies for Data Science and Analytics: The Internet of Things, Machine Learning for Data Science and Analytics, and Statistical Thinking for Data Science and Analytics from edX.