ac. Résumé

DATA ANALYTICS / INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Alec
Cohen.

Seeking data analytics &
information systems roles.

Computer Science graduate. Information Systems master’s candidate. I analyze data, explore patterns, and build applications that bring information together.

Explore my work Get in touch

SELECTED WORK

Data in practice.

Selected projects in data analysis,
intelligent applications, and information systems.

RETRIEVAL

Document research chatbot

I built a document research assistant that lets users ask questions about uploaded files and trace answers back to the source.

  • Streamlit
  • LangChain
  • FAISS
  • Ollama
  • Sentence Transformers

My contribution

I implemented the full application for an INFO 533 team project: a Streamlit chat interface, document parsing and chunking, Sentence Transformers embeddings, FAISS indexing, and retrieval with LangChain and Ollama. I also added image processing with a local vision model and Tesseract OCR.

The output

Answers with retrieved document, page, and chunk references. The application uses local Llama models and prompts designed to ground responses in uploaded content.

PROTOTYPE

Traffic pattern prediction

I built a Python prototype to explore traffic forecasting by combining traffic and weather data, training an XGBoost model, and visualizing predictions.

  • Python
  • Pandas
  • XGBoost
  • Plotly

My contribution

I built the full prototype, from processing NYC DOT traffic and weather records to engineering lag and rolling features, XGBoost training, and Plotly forecast scripts. The pipeline also supports MTA congestion-zone entry data.

The output

Training and forecast-visualization scripts for exploring congestion over time. The prototype uses a derived congestion score and illustrative map coordinates; it is an exploration of the modeling workflow.

SECURITY

Solving a layered cryptographic puzzle

I solved the first stage of a team cryptography challenge, revealing the instruction needed to continue to password derivation and RSA decryption.

  • Python
  • Cipher analysis
  • Cryptography

My contribution

I focused on Stage 1: testing all 26 Caesar shifts, three supplied Vigenère keys, and the possible four-column transposition orders. I identified a Caesar shift of 11 that revealed the next instruction.

The output

A Caesar shift of 11 revealed the next instruction. My teammates used it to derive the password, decrypt the final message, and verify its signature.

CAPSTONE

IronicTuning

My Computer Science capstone: a full-stack automotive platform combining a product catalog, user accounts, news aggregation, and an AI assistant.

  • Flask
  • PostgreSQL
  • SQLAlchemy
  • Alembic
  • Chart.js

My contribution

I designed the application and relational models for users, products, orders, carts, and page views. I added role-based administration, automotive RSS ingestion, and an OpenAI-powered chatbot.

The output

A deployed capstone application with administrative analytics and a migration from SQLite to PostgreSQL. Manual workflow testing covered accounts, product management, and cart behavior.

DATA SYSTEMS

Connecting interests to career paths

A graduate-major and occupation recommendation prototype that connects survey responses with O*NET occupational data.

  • FastAPI
  • PostgreSQL
  • SQLAlchemy
  • ETL

The work

Built around a survey interface, relational data models, and import scripts for occupations, skills, and knowledge. A custom scoring engine combines interest similarity with skills and preference matching.

The output

Ranked occupation matches, rule-based graduate-major suggestions, and an administrative view of submissions. The prototype demonstrates an end-to-end data-to-application workflow.

WEB & API

Inventory management with a history

A Django application for managing products through a web dashboard and REST API, with snapshots of product changes.

  • Django
  • Django REST Framework
  • PostgreSQL
  • Bootstrap

The work

Implemented account registration and login, product CRUD operations, and relational product and version models. The dashboard and API expose product details and version history.

The output

A product history view that records versions, stock, price, the modifying user, and timestamps—making changes visible alongside current inventory.

ANALYSIS

Understanding traffic congestion

A team project combining traffic and weather records to investigate congestion patterns with linear regression.

  • Python
  • Pandas
  • Scikit-learn
  • Matplotlib

The work

The team aligned traffic and weather records to the same year, added a snow indicator, encoded categorical road information, and trained a linear regression model with an 80/20 train–test split.

The output

Correlation analysis, temperature and snowfall summaries, prediction exports, and visualizations exploring the relationship between weather and congestion.

NLP

Finding themes in social conversation

Exploring ten discussion themes in December 2017 #MeToo tweets through unsupervised topic modeling.

  • Python
  • Gensim
  • LDA
  • NLP

The work

Prepared tweets for analysis, created a filtered dictionary and bag-of-words corpus, and trained a ten-topic LDA model with Gensim.

The output

Topic word clouds and a distribution chart showed a dominant theme around the movement and shared stories, alongside political discussion, media reactions, and personal reflections.

Find me on GitHub

BACKGROUND

A technical foundation.
An analytical focus.

My background in Computer Science and Business Management informs how I approach data and systems. I’m continuing that work through an M.S. in Information Systems at Binghamton University.

I’ve worked with regression, clustering, topic modeling, and external data ingestion—moving from raw inputs to analysis and working applications.

My toolkit

Languages
Python, SQL, Java, C, C++
Data & ML
Pandas, linear regression, K-means, LDA, BERT
Databases
PostgreSQL, MongoDB, SQLite, SQLAlchemy
Integration & tools
Flask, FastAPI, Django, REST APIs, Git, Postman

Education & experience

EXPECTED MAY 2027

M.S. Information Systems

Binghamton University, SUNY

MAY 2025

B.S. Computer Science

SUNY Polytechnic Institute

Minor in Business Management

JUN — AUG 2019

Hardware Engineer · Level 1

Webistix Consulting Inc.

Component testing, validation, and documentation to support issue tracking.

CERTIFICATION

Google Project Management Certificate

Coursera

LET’S CONNECT

Have a role
in mind?

I’m interested in opportunities in data analytics and information systems. I’d love to hear about your team and the problems you’re working on.

alecdcohen@gmail.com
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