Austin Rivera

Austin Rivera is a data strategist and data scientist working on the Data, Strategy, and Innovation team at Merck & Co., and a lecturer at the University of Virginia School of Data Science.

Driven by the desire to help others, Rivera plans to continue working across pharma, healthcare, and education to maximize his reach, create better outcomes for patients, affect positive change, and prepare the next generation of data scientists by bringing real world experiences to the classroom.

Prior to his current roles, Rivera held roles on the Strategy and Operations team at Oscar Health, as well as the Global Data Analytics team at Bloomberg LP.

As a recent graduate of the M.S. in Data Science at UVA, Rivera and his team worked with a major consulting firm to complete the master’s thesis (capstone), “Automated Summarization of Structured Healthcare Data: A Framework and Comparison of LLMs.” Rivera has a keen interest in the multitude of applications generative AI has on healthcare, drug discovery, and education, and hopes to bring a thoughtful optimism to the integration of ethical AI-based tools.

During his undergraduate studies, Rivera conducted research into the fields of nanomedicine, biomechanics, and synthetic biology:

• Cardiovascular Research Center, Kimberly A. Kelly, PhD - Created a liposome-based delivery system for treating pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma under the guidance of Postdoc Siva Sai Krishna Dasa, PhD.
• Center for Applied Biomechanics, Matthew B. Panzer, PhD - Developed an MLR model for long-term overuse injury prediction and prevention consisting of kinetic, kinematic, and EMG data taken from subjects continuously for an hour long ride of a stationary bicycle. This was done alongside and under the guidance of Deepak Sathyanarayan, M.S.
• Virginia iGEM 2016, Keith G. Kozminski, PhD - Designed a biocontainment mechanism for genetically modifi ed e coli. 

Rivera holds an M.S. in Data Science from the School of Data Science at the University of Virginia, a Masters of Management from the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, and a B.S. in Engineering Science (Nanomedicine Engineering Track) from the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia.