Xingchu seeks ways to optimize things using an 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.

"Everything that can be invented has been invented." - Charles H. Duell, Commissioner of the U.S. Patent Office, 1899

Dave is a retail and startup junkie. He has spent his 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.

"Why join the Navy if you can be a pirate?" - Steve Jobs

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.

"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." - Albert Einstein

"You can observe a lot just by watching." - Yogi Berra

Joe is an experienced executive and operations research professional with proven and extended know-how in developing and deploying advanced analytical solutions. With more than 18 years of industry experience leading, designing and deploying science-based decision support systems across a variety of industries, he helps companies drive top- and bottom-line growth through objective mathematical models. He comes to BlackLocus after a role as Chief Scientist at a leading B2B pricing firm, and as Principle Data Scientist for AI solutions at EY. He holds a PhD in Physics from Colorado State University, has authored more than 20 research papers and has 3 patents.

Outside the office, Joe is a tennis enthusiast, an avid mountain biker, and plays Texas Hold’em poker. He also enjoys playing bass and guitar in an 80’s, 90’s and 00’s cover band.

"Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple." - Woody Guthrie

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.

"Seek first to understand, and then be understood." - Stephen Covey

Megan likes playing with words just as much as playing with code. She’s currently working on her MS 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 RPGs and bass guitar.

"Contrariwise, if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic." - Lewis Carroll

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.

"Either mathematics is too big for the human mind or the human mind is more than a machine." - Kurt Gödel

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 PhD 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.

"The mind that opens to a new idea never returns to its original size." - Albert Einstein

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 MS 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.

"An approximate answer to the right problem is worth a good deal more than an exact answer to an approximate problem." - John Tukey

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.

"It's not worth doing something unless you were doing something that someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren't doing." - Terry Pratchett

With a degree in psychology combined with computer science, Kate has enjoyed the startup 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.

"Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future." - Seneca

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.

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 BA in Finance from Ole Miss (University of Mississippi) but was pulled home after graduation to work for an oil and 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.

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 company 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.

"If you really want to make a friend, go to someone's house and eat with them... the people who give you their food give you their heart." - Cesar Chavez

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 UIs 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 restaurant, 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.

"I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." - George W. Bush

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.

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!

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 PhD 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.

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 career 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.

"Stay far from timid, only make moves when your heart’s in it, and live the phrase ‘sky’s the limit.'" - Biggie Smalls

Zach possesses a Bachelor of Business Administration in Information Systems from Kennesaw State University. He is always had an interest in technology. Data analysis, data mining, and data science are where his technical interests currently lie. Zach enjoys biking and spending time with family when he can. He enjoys volunteering and dedicating his time to make a difference in the community. Zach also enjoys binge watching Star Trek series on rainy days. Zach has learned throughout life that failure is always essential to success.

"If you don’t get it the first time, always reflect, get up and try again."

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!

"Surrounding yourself with people who inspire you is as important as being talented or working hard."

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.

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.

"My colleagues, they study artificial intelligence; me, I study natural stupidity." - Amos Tversky

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.

Alex has not yet figured out what she wants to do with her life but every day she finds ways to make it more interesting. She spent many years working in the fields of biochemistry and biotechnology before trading in her lab coat for a computer and start-up life. When she’s not learning all the things that tech has to offer, you can find her standing on her head in yoga class, searching for the best curry in Austin and traveling the world.

“Wear sunscreen.” - Mary Schmich

Juba is in Austin because he doesn’t want to be boring anymore. He was previously working on a digital interviewing platform. He likes to spend time with his family.

Born and raised in Honolulu, Crandall eventually left the sunny islands for rainy Seattle and earned a BS in Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington. He has since collected over 25 years’ worth of good experience (and a few bad habits) from his professional gigs in Rochester (Minnesota), Boston, and Austin. His pursuit of clever solutions and intuitive designs keeps him interested in both server-side and front-end projects. When it comes to “holy wars”, Crandall’s on Team Emacs, tabs, Playstation, HP RPN, matte screens, clicky keyboards, and no designated hitter.

In his free time, you can often find Crandall on a bike, tinkering with a bike, or rooting for various college and pro sports teams.

After graduating from Indiana University with a Dual BS in Criminology & Communications, Richard lived in Indianapolis working at a Corn Factory. On a whim, Richard made the move to Austin in late-2015. While sleeping on a couch and working as a barista at a local coffee shop, he decided to make a career move and take one of the many Computer Science Bootcamps offered in town. He’s been applying his data superpowers at BlackLocus ever since.

When he’s not knee-deep in data, Richard is occupying his time with video games, movies, writing, music and general arts and crafts.

"Give out some love and you'll find peace sublime." - Marvin Gaye

Heralding from the swamps of Louisiana, after receiving his BS 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.

In a past life, Léam finished his computing science degree back home in Ireland and worked in the world of financial trading software, building APIs for trading applications and eventually moving into the world of FPGA development in C. Now he writes java at BlackLocus. He is happy to talk to you about anything except payments systems. When he isn’t writing code (or breaking it), he can usually be found working on some sort of car project. If you can put fuel in it and make it go fast and loud, he is probably interested in it. He holds lap records for three professional race tracks in Europe, and is currently eyeing COTA for his next one. His current passion project is a 1977 Datsun 280z, named Mona. Léam is terrified of sharks and likes dinosaurs.

Jeff grew up in the foothills of the Adirondack mountains before graduating from Penn State and moving to Seattle with his husband. There, he tirelessly restored a 1917 bungalow and spent over a decade at Amazon.com working in a variety of roles, from web design and product management to buying and supply chain. After 22 years, and finally admitting that Seattle is really (really) rainy, they moved to Austin where Jeff continued working in tech at Bazaarvoice, BigCommerce – and now, to continue the alliteration, BlackLocus. An admitted ecommerce geek, when not wrangling GitHub tickets Jeff can be found in the garden honing his skills as an aspiring nurseryman, relishing new restaurants, and delighting in well-crafted puns.

"Find something you're passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it." - Julia Child

Megan made the move to Austin, TX, in 2006 to attend school at the University of Texas, where she graduated with a degree in Management Information Systems and discovered her passion for finding creative solutions to new problems through tech. She fell in love with the city and has continued working in the Austin tech scene since.

Always ready for a new adventure, Megan strives to travel the world as much as possible. When not exploring new countries, she can be found spending time outdoors with her dog, Stella, enjoying a glass of wine with friends, or trying out that latest new restaurant in Austin.

"Today me will live in the moment unless it’s unpleasant in which case me will eat a cookie" - Cookie Monster

Karin hails from the Windy City, where she developed a passion for data while huddled in front of her computer avoiding Chicago winters. Prior to joining BlackLocus, she earned an MS in Economics and Policy Analysis from DePaul University and worked in consulting for five years. Outside of work, you can typically find her at a local park with her dog or devouring a breakfast taco.

Lauren, bringing in-depth experience as a technical consultant, appreciates great product design and architecture. Working as a team with a common goal to deliver true value to the user is where she does her happy dance though. She graduated from the University of Texas with a degree in Zoology. Her love for animals persists to this day as she volunteers on the behavior team for APA!, training pooches to become Canine Good Citizens. Any time she has left goes to hanging with her hubby and two fur babies, as well as volleyball and being a fan of college sports, especially Texas. HOOK ‘EM!

Sarah has been connecting people and getting things done in the Austin tech startup scene since 2007. A coworking and agency veteran, she’s passionate about building great places to work and making order out of chaos. She digs operational excellence and fostering healthy working communities. In her spare time, she enjoys trivia, board games, personal finance, and bowling.

"All the things!" - Allie Brosh

Nicole graduated from MIT in 2011 with a BS in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. She spent 6 years in cybersecurity catching bad guys with data before joining BlackLocus. She is passionate about problem solving – big problems, new problems, weird problems, really anything where she gets a chance to use creativity, math, engineering, denial, anger, bargaining…

Outside of work you can find Nicole running around lakes, snowboarding, playing piano, reading, playing with her spazzy cats, and traveling.

Paul was raised on chicken wings in Buffalo, NY, but has spent most of this decade in Austin. He is a graduate of Penn State and has MS degrees in economics and operations research from the University at Buffalo. He is also completing his PhD in Information, Risk, and Operations Management at the University of Texas at Austin. He enjoys using quantitative techniques to solve challenging problems and has worked in a number of industries including retail, healthcare, banking, and government.

Paul spends his spare time with his wife and their crazy golden doodle, cooking, trying new restaurants in town, and attempting to golf.

Jake is a former quantitative psychologist who left academia for greener pastures in 2017. He’s a big stats geek who can often be found hanging out on statistics web forums or tweeting about cool new R or Python packages. He’s particularly interested in mixed effects models and optimal experimental design. He’s also a teetotal vegan cyclist who likes climbing on rocks.