{"id":15467,"date":"2021-06-16T09:47:13","date_gmt":"2021-06-16T13:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/?p=15467"},"modified":"2021-06-16T09:47:13","modified_gmt":"2021-06-16T13:47:13","slug":"the-data-behind-your-burrito","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2021\/06\/the-data-behind-your-burrito\/","title":{"rendered":"The Data Behind Your Burrito"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"\n

As lead data scientist at Chipotle, Mash Syed, MS \u201915, offers in-depth data analysis to the company\u2019s executives to help them make informed business decisions\u2014expertise that took on new value with the onslaught of COVID-19.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pandemic has been horrible,\u201d says Syed. \u201cBut in terms of how our business has had to shift and pivot, it\u2019s been really, really interesting to try to understand the effect of the pandemic on our sales, our customer base, how people\u2019s buying behavior changes, the impact of weather, and the impact of the combination of COVID and weather.\u201d All of these factors, he says, \u201chave changed our business dramatically.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"In the early months of the pandemic, Syed built a machine-learning model\u2014using publicly available data from Johns Hopkins and other sources\u2014that assesses the impact of COVID-19 on the company at the county level. The model helped Chipotle leaders determine, for example, at what point it was safe to ask employees to return to work in a specific region. Over the year-plus that the pandemic has unfolded, Syed says the company has seen a \u201cmassive shift\u201d in customer behavior, with many more customers relying on the Chipotle app to order in advance, rather than stand in line. He believes that trend is here to stay.<\/p>\n

In some ways, Syed considers himself to be a \u201cnontraditional\u201d data scientist. After earning a bachelor\u2019s degree in business administration in 2004, he built a successful real estate brokerage in Northern California, but over time, he began to feel more drawn to the quantitative sciences. In 2009, he returned to school to take several foundational courses in computer science, and then in 2013, he was accepted into Johns Hopkins master\u2019s degree program in computer science<\/a>, \u201cwhich was transformational,\u201d he says, noting that the Introduction to Data Science course \u201creally solidified my interest in data science.\u201d<\/p>\n

After completing his master\u2019s degree, Syed worked as a business intelligence analyst for LA Fitness, and then as a data science consultant at Slalom Consulting. He joined Chipotle in 2019 and has been instrumental in building a new data science team for the company.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As lead data scientist at Chipotle, Mash Syed, MS \u201915, offers in-depth data analysis to the company\u2019s executives to help them make informed business decisions\u2014expertise that took on new value with the onslaught of COVID-19.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":15468,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","issue-summer-2021"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Data Behind Your Burrito - JHU Engineering Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2021\/06\/the-data-behind-your-burrito\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Data Behind Your Burrito - 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