" We're creatures without wings, and yet we've gone to the moon. "
NAM THAT MAN
Data Scientist | Data Analyst | Data Engineer
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About Me

Hello and welcome, as well as my sincerest to you.

My name is Nam Vu. It's so nice to meet you. Thank you for paying a visit to my page. I made this page to manage my professional profile, and showcase my career objective, skill sets, portfolio, and experiences on my path in the Data Science field.

I first studied Computer Science at HCM University of Technology, Vietnam for two years, before transferring to The University of Queensland, Australia. In 2020, I graduated with a bachelor's degree from UQ, majoring in Data Science.

As a data scientist, I work to develop software applications for data analytics production in business. With a strong background in IT/Computer Science/Software Engineering, plus having a huge love for the Business aspect, I strive for improving user experiences through deriving insights out of data, and delivering them (insights) to less technical colleagues and/or stakeholders to drive attentions and engagements.

Previously, I worked for Zalo, VNG Vietnam as a data scientist. I was previously tasked to deliver insights based off of the user behavior analysis on zingmp3 platform, and deploy a tool for checking spelling and grammatical errors on texts.

Academics Experiences Hobbies Milestones

Academic Backgrounds

Australia

University: University of Queensland

Degree: Bachelor Major: Computer Science

GPA: 6.1 / 7

Vietnam

University: Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology

Degree: Bachelor Major: Computer Science

GPA: 8.3 / 10

Working Experience

Zalo (06/2020 - 10/2020)

Title: Data Scientist

Fulltime: Fulltime

Location: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

TMA Solutions (07/2017 - 09/2017)

Title: Data Engineer Intern

Fulltime: Internship

Location: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Hobbies

The 5 hobbies that I really enjoy. Hope you find them interesting.

Running

I am quick on my feet. I love running. During my junior high and high school, I was always on the track and field team, and be selected as the top representatives to compete with other schools. My specialty on the 100-metre dash was top-class and I had proudly won many medals for the school. My best record was 13.78s at my 9th grade. Nowadays, I am not into competence as before, but I keep running as a routine to keep me fit and active.

Billiards

I honestly don't think that I am a pro at billiards, but quite a skillful player I am. Billiards is one of my favorite activity since I first started learning to play it. I always enjoy every time I play with my friends, either for a chill-friendly match or a bit of competition. Billiards is an elegant sport that requires a combination of precision, cleverness, logical thinking of applying physics-mathematics, and also luck.

Fishing

I still remembered back to the first day went to the riverbank with my father, held in the fishing rod and pulled up the very first fish I catched. Till now, fishing is still one of the hobbies that I like the best. The satisfaction of catching a fish on your own is so great. I usually go fishing 2 or 3 times a year. Sometimes I fish at the rivers, other times at the indoor pools, but the best experience is fishing on a fishing boat at sea.

Gaming

To me, video games are a part of me. Firmly to say that I can learn so many things from playing a game compared to reading a book or watching a movie. A good video game could provide me with a variety of materials for self-improvement. For example, I learn the rich and meaningful messages via storytellings of the game; I enrich my creativity and imagination through exploring the game world; I train critical thinking by solved puzzles or challenges; I meet new interesting game characters, that later I could develop companionship, love or hatred feelings toward; I cultivate a sense of gratitude to the hardwork of the developer team after finishing a game. I wouldn't mind talking all day about my love for video games, so let stop here...

Reading

When I was young, I did not like reading at all. Thought it was boring and took times so I usually stopped half-way through after reading a few first pages. But to be frank, I really do enjoy reading recently, maybe because of the pandemic now that I have more time to open and finish a book then find the beauty inside of it. Reading also helps me realize how poor my writing is right now, and of course, it will get better soon, I strongly believe that. By the way, the genres that I like are mystery, crime and detective novel.

Milestones

This section goes through many milestones in my life, from when I was a kid to when I start my first job in the data field.


  • 1996

  • 2003, Elementary School
    - The 'BIG' Kid

    Starting school a year later compared to my age, I am literally a year older than my class friends. Boastfully, my academic performance and wit were top-class at the time. For those reasons, I always acted like a big brother, a leader of my 'gang', groupie o' friends, experienced together the fun part of childhood. What a memorable time! Whether was it a good or bad thing? I would say both.

  • 2008, Junior High
    - The Elites

    With high academic achievements, I entered junior high school and soon joined the top advanced class. This class representing the face of my pride school is full of 'beast' students excelling in both academic and physical activities. Joining this class is a challenge, but not being dropped out of this class after each year selection is the hardest one. No one would want to be the dropping-out ones, as we all set that as the ultimate goal, no exception for me. Besides that individual objective, the class united as one family either on the study, school competitions, moments of joys or sadness. In the end, I was proud to graduate as one of the elites.

  • 2012, High School
    - Dream High

    In high school, I was also in the top class of the school. However, at that time, I didn't feel such tense pressure as of my junior high about staying in the tops. Rather, I put many thoughts and concerns dreaming of my future career path, what job I want to do or pursue, or what suits my abilities. I had juggled between professions of doctor, petroleum engineer for a year. Later, I even attended a drawing class for the architect's degree. And in the end, I chose to follow the IT profession as the final decision at my high school time. Why did I choose IT? Well, to put it bluntly it was for plenty of reasons...

  • 2015, University Entrance
    - Easy?

    To graduate from high school, every Vnese pupil needs to pass the university entrance exam with a baseline score. Those who want to study higher will apply to university. The universities then ranks their contestants, based on the total exam scores of all subjects, and chooses the top highest Ns to accept their admission. To be honest, this time period was quite challenging to most Vnese pupils but me. I passed the exam with a flying score and got admission to the top university in the country. It was quite 'easy'. Am I kidding? Maybe Yes, or No, of course, it was the fruits, built up by the very hard working and efforts in the past years I did.

  • 2015, University of Technology
    - 'Hello World'

    Having studied at HCM University of Technology, the path I had chose to step towards my future career as a software engineer was certainly one of the wisest decisions I’ve ever made. Two years passed by without much challenging, me and my dear friends, who look in the same direction as I do, look forward to the bright future ahead. Besides, the university provided us with the highest standard; well-structured programs; top excellent professors/lecturers; resourceful learning materials, cutting-edge equipment, etc, is everything needed for our development into future promising employees, who will enter the industry workforce after graduation. That was at least what I originally thought of 'A smooth procedure'.

  • 2017, First Internship
    - Frog In The Well

    Being an intern for TMA Solutions as a backend engineer during the university break really opened a new and exciting opportunity to engage me in the industry. Despite being an outstanding student during the academic period, I still felt short for a couple of times at TMA. Very soon the experience there really helped me realize the knowledge, skills acquired from university were not enough, and the image of succession I always imagined was completely torn apart since my first day of the internship. Simply put, I was brought back down to the earth and shortly figured that I had to change myself and go out of the comfort zone. No matter how many times I fail, keep getting back up.

  • 2018, Study Abroad
    - New Horizon

    Getting admission to the University of Queensland, a top 50 university ranking worldwide located in Australia, I transferred to the new academic environment which actually opened up another chapter in my life. This Koalas 'n Kangaroos land is the perfect place to get me out of my comfort zone to challenge myself, to expand my learning, and to further my competence. It is the place that I would spend the next 2 years living in and studying in a serious attempt to broaden my small world.

  • 2019, Data Science
    - The Transition

    The last year at university was a turning point in life as I decided to pursue the career path of data scientist. There is an old saying 'the sexist career in the 21st century, Data Science'. At first, it was just a bit of 'all the fuss' curiosity about the career, and I started consuming 1 or 2 courses online, followed by taking the next 3, 4, or more courses. In addition, I bought some books to further my knowledge, then later worked on case-studies, side projects in data science. Unconsciously, I was totally in love with it.

  • 2020, July, Graduation
    - The End

    With the goal of becoming a data scientist set in my eyes, I put much more serious efforts than ever before. It could be listed as learning from university, online sources, and my work-place seniors, doing my own projects, attending conferences, engaging in forums, finding new materials, reading new researches, practicing latest techniques, competing in hackathons / kaggle, writing blogs to showcase my work, etc. I believe hard work will eventually pay off in gold. Started off as an undergraduate dreaming to be a software engineer, then ended up as a graduate who is soon to be a full fledged data scientist. Up to this point, it had been a long and tough journey as it contained so many up and down moments along the way that I would not forget. While this memorable moment marked the end to my university life and the growth of me over the last 5 years, it has just marked the beginning of my career with the new journey ahead.

  • 2020, July, Zalo
    - The Beginning

    Landing a job in data science at Zalo was a great opportunity to test my capability and ability that I seriously had prepared in the previous year. In our team, we were tasked to deliver machine learning services to production to improve user experiences. My primary responsibility included deriving insights through the analysis of users’ behaviors on Zingmp3 platform, deploying a tool for checking spelling and for identifying grammatical errors on texts. Having a chance to work for Zalo was an essential step in my career and I was honoured to be a part of them.

  • A
    Long Road Ahead!