Anine Laura Borger is a Data Scientist at the company LiveIntent. She graduated from the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen with a bachelor, master, and PhD degree.
Please give a description of the work you do in your current position.
I work as a data scientist for LiveIntent where I use data science to improve email newsletter monetization for our customers. I perform data analyses and computations on large datasets both ad hoc and by implementing and maintaining jobs in our batch pipeline. Working in adtech offers an ever-changing reality to model.
What motivated you to study physics or engineering in the first place?
Already as a kid, I enjoyed teaching. So as a young adult, I wanted to be a high school teacher. If you had asked me back then, I would probably have said that I chose physics because I was curious about the fundamentals of the universe. Looking back however, I think the two main reasons were that physics was fun in high school, and that I had a great teacher in the subject.
What made you decide to pursue a career in the private industry?
I wanted to test my acquired skills before passing them on as a teacher. During my PhD studies, I realized that academia was not the right fit for me for several reasons, and then I was left with the big unknown: private industry. I am in my first job after leaving academia, but this little corner of private industry has many of the aspects of working in academia that I enjoyed: intellectually challenging problems to tackle as well as passionate, intelligent and interesting colleagues to tackle them with.
How do you use the skills you learned as a physicist or engineer in your work?
Every day I apply the mindset of a physicist: I set up hypotheses regarding the world I want to model. I reason about how a given hypothesis will affect our data and try to reject the hypothesis. When tackling huge interconnected challenges, I break them down into self-contained, manageable problems. I am curious about the world I live and work in, and I acquire new domain knowledge as needed. I create data visualization and communicate my work orally and in writing. I scrutinize and discuss the work of others. I use math, statistics and programming skills from my education.
What does being a physicist mean to you?
To me, a physicist is someone who is curious and who doesn’t give up trying to understand the world even though it turns out to be quite muddy.
What advice would you give to young people (in particular women and minorities) with a background in physics who would like to pursue a career in the private industry?
Send applications to a wide range of positions: you might be surprised by what you find the most exciting. Use your network (of physicists) to find the right job opportunity or to improve your cv, job application and interview skills. You are valuable and in high demand so keep in mind that the interviews are as much for you to decide whether you want this job.
Publication date: June 25th, 2024
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