Hi, I’m Simon.

I’m a data science leader, operations researcher, and keen motorcyclist.

By day, I head a cross-functional Data Science team at Freeletics. Alongside driving our core data strategy, I lead our User Acquisition efforts, using algorithmic automation and production-grade AI to scale growth and personalize the user experience.

My interests lie at the intersection of machine learning, causal inference, and applied optimization. I have a deep-rooted interest in modeling complex systems to power robust decision frameworks. Much of my academic work focused on the mobility space and optimization under uncertainty. I used multi-agent simulations to understand the emergent dynamics of heterogeneous traffic and leveraged reinforcement learning to develop intelligent swarm robots. I am also a published academic author, having applied network science to analyze complex social media dynamics.

A current personal project is the automatic generation of immersive travel video using Google Street View imagery, exploring scalable pipelines and computer vision.

I hold an MSc in Computational Science and have studied at the University of Cape Town and the University of Amsterdam, where at the latter I had the privilege to work at the highly active Computational Science Lab.

I’m from Cape Town and I currently live in Munich, with its varied climate and abundant nature.

If you’d like to get in touch about data strategy, ML systems, or just to talk motorcycles, I’d be happy to hear from you. You can reach me via email at my first name at this domain, using my PGP public key if you so wish.