Johan went from a PhD in astrophysics to a data scientist

Johan Beres Bjørgen has been appointed as a Data Scientist in the Performance and Information Management Department at PricewaterhouseCoopers, within the area of ​​Data Analytics. This is what PwC said in an I/O report submitted to Kode24.

It was not natural for him to end up as a data and analysis consultant. Johan holds a PhD in AstrophysicsWith a specialization in solar energy physics.

After researching the Sun's atmosphere, his career took an unexpected turn when he was offered a position at a company that developed and ran several machine learning models. This marked the beginning of his journey into the world of machine learning.

– I understand how complex it is to handle large amounts of data on devices, but apart from that, it was a case of 'learn as you go'. The company had several machine learning models in production, so there was a steep learning curve, Johan says in the I/O post.

Open source satellite images

Before joining PWC, Johan also visited the startup world, combining what he knows about data engineering with machine learning knowledge from his previous job and his background in astrophysics.

During this period, he worked on analyzing open source satellite images and developing machine learning models to identify, for example, sugar plantations in Asian countries.

You will be working with machine learning

PwC wrote in its Input/Output report that Johan started working at PwC after reading articles about the company's average profile and was drawn to the opportunity to work with people from different backgrounds to solve societal problems.

Today, he is involved in a project in which machine learning models are used to balance the Nordic electricity market. The goal is to predict the extent of the disruption that will occur in the electricity network in the near future, which could save the government a lot of money.

Regarding the path from researching the sun to working as a data scientist, he says:

– There are many career opportunities available, and you have plenty of time to explore different industries and areas of expertise. The most important thing is to find the field you are interested in, without specifying a specific career path. You never know where you might end up.