Ulysses Chong Min Zhen
Master of IT in Business (Artificial Intelligence)
Graduation Class of 2022, Dean’s List
Senior Data Scientist, Grab
The year was 2019 when I made the leap to pivot from my role as a Risk Consultant with a Big 4 accounting firm to pursue a career in Data Science. Equipped with a Bachelor’s in Accounting and 3 years of Risk Consulting experience, there were titanic knowledge and technical experience gaps I had to bridge to land a Data Scientist role in the Tech industry.
Enter MITB, the journey that allowed me to successfully grow my “tech-legs” and propelled me to land a job as a Senior Data Scientist in a large technology firm where our teams build cutting-edge production grade AIs. I found the program to be extremely rigorous and rewarding. The faculty is both highly technical and business savvy; they did a great job at training us to apply deep-tech tools to practical business use cases. The students are amongst the brightest and most driven individuals I’ve met, and it was great fun to learn and grow together with them. Ultimately, one of the key goals of the journey was to land a job, and SMU excels here too by having some of the best career coaches who guided me on topics including interview preparation, resume writing and personal branding.
To prospective students, whether you are looking to pivot to a deep-tech role or augment your current profession with advanced analytics, I personally recommend the holistic and technical journey that is MITB without reservations.
