This week’s spotlight is on Sergiu Dinu, who joined Adfin as our very first AI Engineer. He’s bringing cutting-edge thinking to the team and helping us shape what AI at Adfin will look like as we scale. We are very luck to have him on board and excited about all the new stuff we are going to make !
What inspired you to pursue a career in Data Science?
I heard AI/ML is difficult to master and I love facing challenges.
Why did you decide to join Adfin?
There were two main reasons that made Adfin an attractive career move for me: being the first AI engineer in a start-up with a maturing product and the nature of the business problems that I would have to solve - problems that can be tackled with the class of algorithms that I am specialized in, evolutionary algorithms.
What’s the most interesting or challenging project you’ve worked on so far?
I love beguilingly simple mathematical problems of unpredictable depth and difficulty. I attempted to develop an evolutionary algorithm that would solve such a problem: determining the worst case escape path of a lost hiker in a forest of known size and shape - Bellman’s Lost in a Forest problem, one of the 48 “Unsolved problems in geometry”.
What do you enjoy doing in your free time?
There was not a single day since I was 5 that I did not play chess. In a similar competitive spirit I am also playing Rocket League. I also enjoy limited-information puzzles, such as Geoguessr and Phasmophobia.
In longer stretches of time I enjoy travelling around the world with my wife, mainly to experience the local cuisine. We also enjoy dancing salsa, bachata and kizomba.
What’s your favourite book, movie, or TV show?
I got into the habit of keeping track of every book, movie, TV show and game I experience - grading each one in order to, hopefully, one day build a specialized recommendation tool for myself. My all time favorite story was portrayed in the TV show “The Leftovers”.
We’re lucky to have someone as curious, driven, and sharp as Sergiu on the team. Thanks for joining, Sergiu!
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