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I’m SayedMorteza (Morteza) Malaekeh, a Ph.D. Candidate in Sustainable Systems Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, with an M.Sc. in Economics. I am currently seeking full-time opportunities starting in 2027 in data science, applied/research ML, recommender systems, quantitative research, and causal AI.

My research focuses on applying causal inference and machine learning in high-dimensional settings to important societal and business problems, particularly in recommender systems, economics, finance, and sustainability.

Most recently, I was a PhD Data Science Intern at Roblox, where I worked on the Roblox Moments short-form video recommender system, using causal ML, deep learning, Bayesian optimization, and A/B testing on large-scale behavioral data.

I was also a Quantitative Research Fellow at Quanta Ventures Fund, developing and backtesting systematic trading strategies using machine learning and quantitative methods.

Previously, I was a Visiting PhD Researcher at Caltech and a researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, working on multimodal causal ML and large-scale economic and energy datasets.

I have been fortunate to work with Prof. Sergio Castellanos at UT Austin and Prof. Hannah Druckenmiller at Caltech, whose mentorship has shaped much of my work in causal inference, economics, and data science.

Technical Skills

Programming: Python, SQL, R, MATLAB, STATA
ML/AI: PyTorch, scikit-learn, XGBoost, Recommender Systems, Deep Learning, LLMs (Hugging Face, LangChain, PEFT/LoRA), Bayesian Optimization
Causal ML & Experimentation: Double ML, R-Learner, Causal Forests, EconML, DoWhy, A/B Testing, DiD, Synthetic Control
Quantitative Finance: Backtesting, Alpha Signals, Time-Series Modeling, Monte Carlo Simulation, Stochastic Processes
Data & MLOps: Spark/PySpark, Hive, Trino, Databricks, Distributed Pipelines, Docker, Kubernetes
Cloud & Compute: AWS, GCP, CUDA, Slurm/HPC, Linux/Bash, Git

Service & Activities

• Program Committee / Reviewer: NeurIPS GenAI for Health
• Reviewer: Agricultural Economics, Theoretical & Applied Climatology, Environmental Monitoring & Assessment
• Board of Directors: Persian Student Society at UT Austin
• Peer Mentor: UT Austin
• Teacher: Yarigaran Education Charity Group
• Basketball Analyst/Writer: 3Sanieh
• Former Varsity Basketball Athlete: Sharif University of Technology