Will Calandra

Will Calandra

Senior Data Scientist @ Prudential Financial | NYU + Georgetown

Hello there, I’m Will! 👋

About Me 👨‍💻

I am a data scientist who loves bringing together people and data to solve problems. I seek opportunities to lead and create impact, having founded multiple data science initiatives while building new data-driven applications for large enterprises. I enjoy communicating actionable insights from seemingly disparate datasets, connecting with wider audiences from my experiences across academic, sports, and business settings.

Technologies: Python, R, SQL, Git, Excel
Python libraries: Pandas, NumPy, Scikit-Learn, PyTorch, Hugging Face, OpenAI, PySpark, Beautiful Soup
Techniques: RAG, Regression, Clustering, Random Forest, Neural Networks, Time Series, Causal Inference

Education 🎓

New York University, Center for Data Science, New York, NY May 2025
M.S. in Data Science GPA: 3.83/4.0
Coursework: Probability and Statistics, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Big Data, NLP, NLU, Time Series, Causal Inference, ML Systems and Operations

Projects

  • Designed GraphRAG-based search engine for United Nations peacekeeping operation, reducing analyst time spent from hours to minutes with a 24-point improvement in response preference over traditional RAG approach
  • Extracted 4 features from weekly student participation responses for engagement and feedback analysis of 2 NYU courses
  • Designed 3D pathfinding simulation task with 4 evaluation metrics to reveal LLM spatial reasoning limitations
  • Analyzed distributional and ML performance of LLMs and GANs for tabular synthetic data generation across 2 datasets
  • Performed sentiment and n-gram analyses on Yelp reviews of 10K+ restaurants to study Michelin star brand image
  • Built Spotify song recommendation engine achieving 60% mean average precision using SVD collaborative filtering method

Georgetown University, McDonough School of Business, Washington, DC May 2023
B.S. in Business Administration GPA: 3.78/4.0
Major: Operations and Information Management
Minors: Statistics, Computer Science
Honors Thesis: “Deploying AI Systems Responsibly: Evaluating Explainable AI Techniques for Trustworthy Decision Support”

Selected Experience 🌟

Prudential Financial, Newark, NJ June 2024 – August 2024
Data Science Summer Associate

  • Engineered RAG pipeline from scratch to accelerate life insurance underwriting from 48 hours to 2 minutes per quote
  • Transformed prospective applicant inquiries into summary tables of medical conditions with LLM-generated explanations to boost underwriter productivity for estimated $2M in annual savings
  • Ingested 500+ unstructured underwriting documents into vector database for downstream generative AI applications
  • Developed test suite of 5 LLM evaluation metrics across summarization, search, and generation for business use cases

Georgetown Baseball, Georgetown University, Washington, DC August 2021 – May 2023
Director of Analytics

  • Recruited and led 19 students for value delivery to Division I baseball program through design and execution of decision support systems and outbound engagement strategies
  • Translated raw performance data into practical pitching insights, driving a 15% reduction in runs credited to pitching staff
  • Streamlined integration of internal and external databases to extract, transform, and load relevant data for analysis, saving 100+ hours for coaching staff and team analysts

IQVIA, Durham, NC June 2021 – April 2023
Business Analyst Intern

  • Built interactive application to analyze statistical drivers of product UX performance from 19 user survey questions
  • Examined key features for predicting drug candidate success by SQL querying 51 table clinical trial relational database
  • Conducted user survey segmentation using clustering and random forest algorithms to develop 5 personas for product launch

Hoyalytics, Georgetown University, Washington, DC September 2021 – December 2022
Chief Analytics Officer

  • Founded Analytics Office to develop members’ technical skills and cultivate data science interests on campus
  • Orchestrated content creation and curation as Chief Editor for club Medium blog and Twitter feeds, generating 2K views across 17 articles that showcased personal projects, industry newsletters, and analytics career guides
  • Spearheaded first club capstone project analyzing changes in USMNT fan sentiment from Twitter API data

VP of Technology

  • Upskilled 21 members’ technical capabilities through creation and delivery of 10+ hours of modules in R and Git
  • Moderated 4 forums with data and technology industry leaders to increase awareness of analytics initiatives across sports and academic communities

Additional Experience 🏆

New York University, Center for Data Science, New York, NY August 2024 - Present
Teaching Assistant, Section Leader

  • Design and lead weekly lab sessions, host office hours, and provide feedback on curricula for graduate (Introduction to Data Science, 200 students) and undergraduate (Principles of Data Science, 30 students) courses

PowerUp Tutoring, Wilmington, DE June 2018 – August 2021
Owner

  • Conducted capability assessments and created individualized lesson plans for each client
  • Performed math tutoring sessions for both mainstream students and students with IEPs
  • Satisfied parent expectations and concerns using effective management and communication skills

Leading Youth Through Empowerment, Wilmington, DE May 2020 – August 2020
Data Operations & IT Support Intern

  • Overhauled legacy operations to Salesforce platform and created ability to collect and analyze attendance data for 100+ students across all educational programs
  • Collaborated with Salesforce vendors to engineer efficient solutions to operational bottlenecks
  • Coordinated with executive team to brainstorm new projects and directives involving the use of technological capabilities