My Courses

California's Next Top Big Data Scientist

Previously named "Big Data Analytics", this is a core course of our Master of Business Analytics program in San Fransisco. It is designed to equip you with state-of-the-art big data skills to become an effective data scientist in this evolving landscape. Emphasis is put not only on technical skills but also on how you are going to be an effective communicator of your analytics work to your team and upper management. Topics covered in this class include Distributed Computing with Apache Spark, Streaming Processing with Kafka, Text Analytics, Social Network Analytics, and Deep Learning.

Customer Analytics

This is an elective course of our UC Davis MBA program. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a management approach that recognizes customers as the core of a business. Companies strive to use effective CRM to optimize the identification, acquisition, growth and retention of desired customers. This course will teach you how to use customer analytics to learn about and market to individual customers. Ultimately, this “bottoms up" approach will allow you to compute a company’s valuation and show you how marketing is interconnected with finance and accounting.

Data Analytics New Ventures Final Project

Traditional education is built around exams and test scores. These are good in assessing the student's ability to assimilate knowledge but do not enhance their creativity and motivation. At the same time, they limit the professor's motivation and energy to teach the same course over and over again. To this end, I have decided to take a different approach. Specifically, my MBAs are working with my MSBA students in building together a data analytics new venture initiative that tries to fulfill a currently un-solved business or social good challenge. In the end, groups present their ideas in front of a panel of experts, and awards are given to the best projects. If you are a working professional in the Bay Area either in the field of VC or Data Analytics and you would like to be a judge, please shoot me an email.

Notes to Prospective Students

Apart from the creativity component of the final project, its further purpose is to help you build an effective communication "language" between managers and data scientists. This lack of a common language is one of the biggest issues I have observed in the industry, which eventually leads to silos and unhappiness from both sides.
Although I am teaching CRM, it is my strong belief that students should not be treated as customers by universities. I am expecting you to put the effort required to excel in my classes.
Hard work beats talent!