Hi, my name is Liam :-)

I’m a Columbia SIPA-QMSS double Master’s graduate and Fulbright Scholar with deep interests in data science and quantitative applications to economic policy, international trade and financial markets. Half Aussie, half Singaporean, food, travel and nature lover. Always curious. Currently working as a quantitative research associate at M Science.

• Email: liam.k@columbia.edu
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liamtaykearney
• Nationalities: 🇦🇺 Australia, 🇮🇪 Ireland, 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
• Languages: English (native), Mandarin (fluent), Spanish (ok), Malay (basic), Hokkien (basic)
• Interests: data science, data visualization, political economy, applied econometrics, alternative data, equity research

Projects

Data science and visualization

1. imfpy - an intuitive API client for the IMF - python package
2. Understanding COVID-19 misinformation - NLP resources, Tableau visualizations
3. Understanding far-right networks using Wikipedia data - paper
4. Flood classification using satellite data - presentation

Applied econometrics

1. New measurements of inequalities in public transit accessibility - Shiny app
2. Time series analysis of Australian inward FDI - paper
3. Empirical analysis of municipal broadband restrictions - policy memo

Political economy

1. Congressional FTA voting and import competition - policy brief
2. Analyzing partisanship in America through language - Shiny app
3. Private sector participation in Europe's pivot away from Russian gas - report

Technical Skills ►

I am most comfortable/skilled in data mining with R, Python, SQL, Tableau and Excel, with experience applying them across a variety of use cases and subject domains. I also have proficiency in the following:

Skill area	Technologies
Data Visualization	Tableau, Shiny, D3, Dash
Databases	MySQL, MongoDB, Neo4j, MS Access
Geospatial	QGIS, Leaflet, GeoPandas, GeoDa
Machine Learning	Scikit-learn, TensorFlow, PyTorch
Econometrics & Statistics	R, Stata, EViews
Cloud Services	AWS, GCP, Snowflake
Big Data & Workflow	Databricks, PySpark, Airflow
Web Development	HTML, CSS, JS, Flask
Version Control	Git, Github

Qualifications ►

• Master of International Affairs - International Finance & Economic Policy (Columbia SIPA)
• Master of Arts - Applied Data Science (Columbia QMSS)
• Bachelor of Philosophy (Hons) - Economics, Finance (UWA)
• Diploma of Interpreting - Chinese-English (AIWT)

Experience ►

• M Science - Quantitative Research Associate (2023-present)
• University of Pennsylvania - Research Data Analyst (2022-present)
• Citi Global Wealth - Grad. Consultant, Investment Research (Fall 2022)
• Columbia SIPA - Research Assistant, Data Science & Public Policy (2021-22)
• Columbia SIPA - Teaching Assistant, R for Policy Research (2021-22)
• Australian Embassy, Beijing - Public Affairs Assistant (2018)
• UN Capital Development Fund - Junior Research Analyst (2017)
• Internships:
  • Asia Society Policy Institute (Washington, 2022)
  • KPMG Global China Practice (Beijing, 2018)
  • Westpac Institutional Bank (Sydney, 2017)

Hobbies ►

• Cooking - from my Peranakan heritage (ongoing project)
• Eating - here are some favourite destinations in Singapore, NYC, Houston and Perth
• Travelling - here are some places I've visited on the journey so far
• Jazz - am an aspiring (amateur) jazz piano player