Originally, Lea Benyamin wanted to be a doctor, but after discovering she was squeamish at the sight of blood, she turned to engineering to use her problem-solving skills for good.
Benyamin completed her undergraduate studies in France at CentraleSupélec, which specializes in engineering sciences. She chose the M.S. in Data Science program at Columbia University for its breadth of courses and for the opportunity to live in New York City. “I love the vibe at Columbia, the opportunities, the classes, the teachers, my classmates,” she said. “And even being able to have a kosher dining hall…in France, we don’t have that. I’m living my American dream!”
Benyamin’s first data science experience was with Zoov, a bicycle rental startup where she used machine learning to analyze rider preferences. “We used a variety of data points—weather, bike speed, ride length, sensors on the bike—to determine which rides were more popular and why,” she explained. “It was the first time that I was working with a company with a real goal, real clients, and a real problem.”
The Zoov experience prompted Benyamin to enroll in a one-year computer science boot camp and internship through the Israel Tech Challenge. She focused on full stack development and provided a range of front- and back-end programming skills.
Benyamin also applied her skills at Madbox, a French mobile game development company. She worked with a group of developers to automate internal processes for the game production and marketing teams. “I really enjoyed being part of a team and working with a company that cared about its employees and our professional development and growth. It was a real technical experience and also a real human experience.”
Today, Benyamin has circled back to her initial interest in health care; she tackles medical projects whenever possible, like working with a cancer-related dataset during a recent data visualization course. “I would like to work with medical data and images for early detection of medical problems, for example, and to find solutions for illnesses,” she said. “I am convinced that data can help make our future better and safer.”
— Karina Alexanyan, Ph.D.