Xingchu seeks ways to optimize things using analytical approach. With over 10 years of research and consulting experience in revenue/pricing optimization, supply chain management, business intelligence solution, and digital marketing, he has a proven record of consistently delivering 5-15% profit lift dollars to a variety of businesses. Xingchu received two undergraduate degrees in Automation and Business Administration, one master’s degree in Control Engineering from Tsinghua University, and earned his PhD in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at Texas A&M University. He holds a number of patents and applications in pricing and analytics field.

Dave is a retail and startup junkie. He has spent his 9 year career in the retail space helping make sense out of the dollars and cents. Dave has worked on both sides of the retail technology table: Leading an IT team for an apparel retailer and working in product management for a SaaS based internet marketing company. Before Dave started working in retail he attended The University of Virginia, where he earned a BS in Electrical Engineering.

When Dave isn't innovating for The Home Depot, he enjoys spending time with his wife and 2 kids, building custom furniture, and watching any of his favorite New York sports teams.

Kellie is passionate about making an impact, solving problems and building world-class teams. Starting with Trilogy in 1998, Kellie has worked with a number of start-ups, including Lombardi, MessageOne, and Vast. Her roles are broad, and she has worn multiple hats from Sales Operations, to Special Project Manager, to Director of Human Resources. Addicted to the entrepreneurial nature of start-ups, she continues to be spoiled by working with the best and the brightest. At BlackLocus, she has yet to be a serious threat at ping pong.

Customer Success Guru, Support Community Manager, and Technology Evangelist, are the many hats that Kim wears. With a talent for quickly mastering technology and explaining how it works to the masses, she is dedicated to the success and support of both internal and external customers alike. Kim has worked for a major airline and software companies big and small, however, one thing remains the same, her ability to connect the dots for both customer and company. Kim has a music degree from the University of Wisconsin which makes her a ringer on karaoke night. She is also a fan of all things Trek - from Star Trek to Trek bikes. When she is not riding her bike, her next favorite thing is helping customers to live long and prosper.

Pavan is the Principal Scientist in Machine Learning at BlackLocus. When not playing ping pong at work, he enjoys finding and solving challenging big data and machine learning problems. He has been developing machine learning algorithms and systems for over 10 years, and enjoys coding as much as working with modeling and theory. He obtained his PhD in machine learning from Michigan State University. Prior to joining BlackLocus, he was a postdoctoral associate at the Center for Biological & Computational Learning at MIT.

Outside of work, Pavan enjoys hiking, playing guitar, watching movies, and searching for extraterrestrials with his telescope. He is trying to synchronize his trollability index with rest of the team.

Henk Jan (HJ) has more than 10 years of research and consulting experience in demand modeling, vehicle incentive analysis and price optimization. HJ holds a graduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from Delft University of Technology and a PhD in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from University of Illinois at Chicago where he contributed to the development of Decision-Based Design. Originally from the Netherlands (Hup Oranje!), HJ enjoys spending his free time with his wife, dog, and friends.

Ray has been writing code and hacking on embedded hardware devices for over a decade. He's delivered high performance search solutions, continuous integration, content management, data normalization, and development platform tooling to a variety of companies including a health and wellness solutions provider, a top-tier video game publisher, a prominent public television broadcasting corporation, one of the world’s largest oncology care entities, and a Fortune 500 retailer.

Ray attended Baylor University for his BS and MS in Computer Science. When he's not building flying robot prototypes or Tesla coils, he's probably releasing Open Source goodies, so check out his GitHub page over at github.com/rholder.

Chad is a lifelong learner of all the things, except writing introductions. He brings years of experience from various semiconductor and software companies around Texas. Chad has many interests including software development, automation, continuous improvement, team cohesion, and problem solving. He believes work and life can be fun and efficient and strives to make each day so. Chad really enjoys working at BlackLocus and looks forward to continue moving the needle here.

In his free time, he enjoys researching whatever suits his mood, which usually involves medicine and technology. He also enjoys doing anything and everything with his lovely wife and two dogs.

Rees graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a BS in Mathematics and began his career at Chesapeake Energy. After fleeing the energy industry he began python programming full time at Demand Media before landing at Blacklocus. He enjoys breaking things, fixing what he breaks and then discovering a clever solution to the whole issue.

In his free time Rees enjoys grand strategy games, ancient military history and weightlifting.

Emma has developed open-source academic software for robot simulation and learned the magic of machine learning from controlling robots to perform grasping. She comes to BlackLocus to embrace the opportunity of writing "intelligent" software to solve real-world business problems. She received her undergraduate and master degrees from Northwestern Polytechnical University in China and earned her Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY.

Knowledge-acquiring and problem-solving have been her important sources of fun in everyday life. When not exercising the brain, Emma enjoys hiking, kayaking in Zilker Park and snorkeling with sea turtles during vacation, or just having fun with her cat.

Megan likes playing with words just as much as playing with code. She's currently working on her M.S. in Computational Linguistics, because in a past life she wrote credit card software for a major bank and got really, really bored. When she's not trying to take over the world, Megan likes playing tabletop RPG's and bass guitar.

After years of focusing on making sure data was always available and quickly accessible, Erin joined BlackLocus to expand her data skill set to include a deeper capacity for analysis. She enjoys a challenge and believes that simplifying a problem is the first step to solving it. Erin loves her hometown of New Orleans, but has become too captivated with the Austin startup scene to move back. In addition to data, Erin's passions include wine tasting, travel, and wiener dog races.

Kayla is a graduate of Rice University and has a M.S. in Statistics from UT. She likes to rout out new problems to analyze and solve and is excited to continue working in machine learning. She firmly believes that data is beautiful -- so long as it's not in a pie chart.

Outside of the office, Kayla can be found out with her dog, at the nearest movie theater, or with her latest craft project.

Brent spent 15 years at Apple, writing low-level system software. If you have a Mac or an iPhone, you’re running some of his code. Joining Apple was his escape route from Cornell’s Computer Science PhD program. Although he didn’t get a degree there, he does have a BSc in Computer Science from the University of Alberta, and an MSc in Computer Science from the University of Victoria. He likes clever solutions and would someday like to work smarter rather than harder.

In his spare time, Brent is trying to complete a double-major degree in Medicine and Russian Nuclear Submarines from Wikipedia. This is taking longer than expected. But with 3 kids there is never a dull moment!

Karlie loves to code. She gets an endorphin high from writing beautiful code for software that meets a human need. What else is so mentally stimulating, creatively satisfying and instantly gratifying? With the myriad of electronic devices in a world of ubiquitous computing, she thinks it is now more important than ever to consider both the human and the hardware as critical parts of a system and optimize accordingly. The result should be a fast, reliable, simple and enjoyable product that solves the right problem. To that end, she enjoys front-end development as well as designing APIs and backend systems. Internationalization (or should that be internationalisation?) is one of her recent interests.

When she's not working or coding for fun, she's either hanging out with the objectively cutest son the planet has ever accommodated or practicing belly dance.

Alex is passionate about product design and believes well designed and executed products can improve people's everyday lives and make businesses run better. He has over 10 years in the software industry as both a UX designer and product manager. Alex holds a BA in Communication from the University of Pennsylvania and a Masters of graphic design from Centro Studi in Rome Italy.

When he can find waves—easier said then done in Austin, TX—Alex can be found out in the ocean on a surfboard.

With a degree in psychology combined with computer science, Kate has enjoyed the start up scene in Austin for the last five years. From mobile apps to video streaming, she found her way to BlackLocus to focus on Product Management. She truly believes in the lean philosophy of building and has found agile methodologies not only work well, but encourage a team spirit that can make a product shine.

Her spare time is spent writing, learning Python and piano, and chasing two small children around taco shops and bouncy houses all over ATX.

Shela has a passion for solving problems through design and an eagerness to make people’s lives easier. She loves all facets of design, whether it's brainstorming with pen and paper, getting deep into the mind of a user, or whipping up HTML/CSS prototypes on the fly. Prior to working at BlackLocus, Shela had been writing HTML/CSS for over 10 years in some capacity, running her own online zine at 14.

Outside of work you can find Shela at a music festival, trying a new restaurant, enjoying a bourbon cocktail, or making dessert.. often with more bourbon.

Jordan spent years architecting risk management systems after receiving a bachelors in Computer Science from Rice University and a masters in Financial Mathematics from the University of Chicago. With encouragement to think even bigger, he has recently been engineering services with applications to data science and distributed systems. Jordan enjoys developing software that is fun to demonstrate and simple to explain.

In his free time he is probably either looking for excuses to sample new foods or trying to keep up with the latest in independent music.

Mario was born and raised in San Jose, Costa Rica. After high school in Costa Rica, he moved to Des Moines, IA to live with his sisters. While in Iowa, he taught himself English, earned an internship at Pioneer HiBred, a DuPont Co and graduated from Iowa State University with a BS in Management Information Systems. His internship and studies at ISU lead him to love all things UI/UX. Mario moved to Austin in 2006 to further his career at IBM and then Vignette. He is a skilled software engineer and thrives in BlackLocus' collaborative team environment.

When Mario is not working, he enjoys playing with his two young girls and cooking delicious food for the family. And if there’s time after all that, you will find him on the golf course or soccer field.

As a child, Brandon had an annoying habit of taking things apart just to put them back together again. Who would have thought this would have turned into a career? Deconstructing wireframes and user stories and building them into meaningful UI's is his passion. From interaction design to user experience implementation, Brandon has built his career on understanding how and why users interact with software. Brandon has been working within the User Experience space of development for over 6 years, from building large scale ecommerce platforms, to building stock trading applications, he has seen it all.

When his nose is not buried in code, you can find Brandon stuffing his face at some new restuarant, or attempting to exercise in the park because he spent the night before stuffing his face. He can also be found reading a book, playing guitar, or dancing wildly at a local music show.

Karen is a determined individual who took a non-traditional path into software engineering. While working in the hospitality industry as a reservations coordinator, she wondered if her innate ability to solve puzzles and the fun she had building a computer would serve her in a career where she thought she would excel. She had the opportunity to study CS fundamentals on her own while living in Japan during 2013-2014, and after completing MakerSquare, an intense, immersive software engineering program, she emerged as a full stack JavaScript butterfly-er, developer.

She can talk for a while about Japan, Myst, and James Bond theme songs.

Rick graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a BS in Mathematics and an MS in Statistics. He spent the first three years of his career building price optimization models for a number of clients. He likes coming up with solutions that the end user can understand and appreciate.

Outside of work, Rick is probably thinking about traveling or the next meal.

Lee was born in Austin, raised in Austin, and is currently living in, you guessed it, Austin. He ran away for four years to pursue a B.A in Finance from Ole Miss (University of Mississippi) but was pulled home after graduation to work for an Oil & Gas intelligence firm. He joined BlackLocus to gain experience using big data applications and for the assortment of free cookies. Lee’s second home is located in MySQL.

Abigail was born in Chicago, raised in Milwaukee, and went to college in Minneapolis so her accent is a little Blues Brothers meets Fargo. She now resides in Austin, Texas where she mainly just eats tacos, drinks coffee/beer, and bikes around the city. But when she’s not being the stereotype of a designer, she's out kicking ass on the tennis court.

At work, Abigail has a passion for user research and storytelling which drives her to put the user first and convinces everyone else why they should too.

Sarah loves multi-tasking, connecting people, and schadenfreude. She's spent most of her career creating cool videos for marketing and training teams, before falling into tech writing with her work-family at BlackLocus. She loves bringing people together, which is why she's founded 4 Meetup groups. But mostly she loves the mountains, which is why she and her husband moved to Seattle in 2016. She splits her time between laptop hunching at coffee shops, hiking/climbing/snowboarding in the Cascades, and teaching yoga in the park. Pretty much the dream life!

Originally from Houston, Farah made the move to Austin in 2009. She was first exposed to code at a young age when she wanted to find a way to showcase her digital artwork online. She rediscovered her love of code while obtaining her M.A. in Asian Studies.

When her nose isn’t buried in a book, Farah spends her remaining free time pursuing her art, learning languages and diving into new hobbies. Her interests include architecture, Indo-Persian poetry and ASOIAF.

Raised in a tiny West Texas town you've never heard of, Blake had plenty of time to tinker with computers. His pursuit of knowledge about the subject led him to study Computer Science at UT Austin and has stayed in the city ever since. A gamer at heart in the truest sense, board games, video games and a variety of sports all fall under his purview. Other hobbies include weightlifting, poorly singing karaoke and keeping up with the latest Dota 2 tournaments.

Harrison grew up in Atlanta and graduated from Georgia Tech with a degree in Computer Science. Originally an engineering major, Harrison fell in love with programming during his first CS course. After graduating, he moved to Austin to put his passion for problem solving and building great software to work.

Away from the computer, Harrison enjoys spending time with his wife and their two cats, playing hockey, seeing live music, and traveling. And he's kind of obsessed with Umphrey's McGee.

Jose Luis was born in Obregon, Mexico, lived there until age 18 and then became a nomad for 13 years going to Monterrey, Purdue, Stanford, Mexico City, back home, College Station and finally Austin, where he expects to find a steady water and food supply he can stick to until he gets old (if that ever happens).

On his journeys Jose Luis got Bachelor’s, Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Industrial Engineering/Management Science from Monterrey Tech, Stanford and Texas A&M. He has worked a variety of modeling and consulting jobs within and also a bit outside the IE/MS umbrella, including manufacturing system simulation, performance metrics optimization and tollway feasibility/pricing. He has also worked on theoretical research for convex regression.

Outside of number crunching Jose Luis can be found wine tasting, practicing yoga, meditating, working out at the gym or doing a variety of outdoor stuff. He also follows boxing quite closely.

Data, prices and cookies: things Tako dreams about.

After getting his MS in Economics in the Netherlands, he has worked for many years as a senior economist at the Dutch Competition Authority. He then decided to move to Austin, TX with his wife to start a cookie company (stroopwafels!) and work for BlackLocus. He has always combined rigorous data analyses with critical economic thinking to make the best decision and make our customers happy!

In Houston, Texas, born and raised, playing with computers is where Alan spent most of his days. He moved to Austin in 2008 to pursue a EE degree from the University of Texas where he fell in love with the city. Alan started his carreer at a little company called Bazaarvoice before joining Blacklocus to tackle bigger and more complex problems.

When not at work, you can find Alan traveling around the world, trying out the latest restaurants and cocktail bars, or at a Longhorn football game.

Stacey is the Queen of the Kitchen.

Stacey is the Goddess of Organization.

Stacey is who gon' run this town tonight (What's up!)

Heralding from the swamps of Louisiana, after receiving his B.S. in Computer Science from ULM, Sam moved to Austin in 2015 to work for a health care business analytics firm. Escaping from the shackles of .net programing, he joined BlackLocus to make some waves in the pricing comparison world.

When he is not busy enjoying short stacks of pancakes or full stack development, he enjoys exploring Austin with his dog Victorious D.O.G.

Hunter studied finance at the University of Florida before discovering a passion for writing code, leading to an M.S. in computer science. An unending curiosity for business, technology, and how the two fit together has taken him from integrating real estate portals in the Florida Panhandle, to writing social marketing platforms in Baltimore, to detecting counterfeits in global supply chains here in Austin. If you ask him what he's learned; he'll tell you that what's really important is the people you work with.

What Hunter enjoys most is spending time with his wife, baby, and two goldendoodles Sula and Cocoa.

Wang was born and raised in China and graduated from college in Chinese Literature and Marketing Communication. She later became a big fan of programming and completed her Bachelor's degree in Computer Science in only 2.5 years at the University of Texas at Austin. Wang and her (fellow Longhorn) husband made Austin their second hometown.

Outside of work, Wang enjoys playing piano and cello, traveling, and doing everything with her cat, Summer. She has traveled to many places around the world, though her favorite was her 2016 African safari trip to Maasai Mara National Reserve in Kenya. The experience of falling asleep around hippos snoring is amazing! She hopes she can return to this nature of wildlife again in future!

Uzair graduated from the University of Kentucky with a BBA in Finance and a Masters in Healthcare Administration.  He began his career as a consultant at The Advisory Board Company helping hospitals get their money right.  After moving to Austin and catching the tech bug he transitioned into a career in product management where he gets to ask people what they need, figure out what they really need, and build something of value quickly and efficiently.  Uzair enjoys talking to almost anyone he meets, simplifying problems, discovering solutions, and eating breakfast tacos.

Outside of work you can find Uzair jamming out at his favorite live music joints, chasing after his lab Wilson, and eating anything in his peripheral.

Xingyu holds a graduate degree of Statistics and a PhD in Education and Psychology from University of Michigan. She came to BlackLocus after years of building computer models for human cognition (or their cognitive biases). She believes that a well-formed problem ranks higher on importance than any solution. Although she acknowledges that coming up a solution is more enjoyable than forming the problem.

Outside work, Xingyu is an outdoor fanatic and a dance enthusiast. She also enjoys running, playing fetch, or doing anything with her dog.

Due to being easily startled by loud noises, sudden movements, or direct eye contact, he tends to spend most of the time hiding in the bushes. Sorry, that's the bio for the neighbor's cat. Ruhul came to Austin to attend the University of Texas not knowing what to pursue in life. Having always had a deep interest in computers, he thought maybe learning more about these boxes connected across a world wide network might lead to a future career. Now after 1C years in the field, he thinks he might be onto something.

When not whispering sweet nothings to a computer, he enjoys food, drinks, music, biking, and travel. With a bit of danger thrown into all of them for good measure.

Miles grew up in the Atlanta area without much issue. He pushes to deliver material solutions that improve decision modeling. He graduated from the College of Charleston with a BS in Economics, and was somehow able to convince his future wife to move back home (like literally in the house Miles grew up in) after school. He has spent time in the financial, medical, and retail industries, where he discovered his love for predictive analytics and crashing Office applications.

His spare time is spent with his family, music, and movies. When he isn’t trying to vacuum all information from the old books on his shelves, he’s probably got a metal album cranked up to 11.