Data Scientist · AI & Machine Learning

Samir
Hendawi

Turning data into decisions.

I apply analytics, AI, and cloud-enabled data science to real-world business and financial problems. With a foundation in cognitive science, I bring a structured, human-aware approach to data — delivering clear, actionable insight that drives measurable outcomes.

TORONTO · 2026 Samir Hendawi
3.9/4.0
MMA cGPA · Rotman
4×
Dean's List w/ High Distinction
E2E
Data to Deployment
4+
Analytics & AI Roles
01 Profile

A data scientist working at the intersection of analytics, machine learning, and applied AI — currently building agentic systems in financial services at Scotiabank.

My background in cognitive science shapes how I read data: structured, human-aware, and always anchored to the decision it's meant to support. I'm especially interested in the integration of behavioral economics within cognitive science.

Based inToronto, Ontario
FocusData Science · AI / ML · Financial Analytics
NowAI Practitioner, Scotiabank
StudyingM.M.A. — Rotman, UofT
CitizenshipCanadian / American
LanguagesEnglish · Arabic · French
02 Experience
Jan 2026 — Present

AI Practitioner — Global AI & ML
Scotiabank

Toronto, ON · Financial Services
Scotiabank logo
  • Designed and deployed an agentic AI system generating advisor-ready client insights — orchestrating structured banking data (KYC, transactions, investments, advisor notes) with LLM-based reasoning on GCP Vertex AI.
  • Built end-to-end cloud inference pipelines across BigQuery, Dataproc, and Vertex AI for scalable, low-latency insight generation across advisor workflows.
Agentic AI · GCP
May — Sep 2024

Financial Analyst
ASTRA Industrial Group

Riyadh, KSA · Diversified industrial conglomerate
  • Automated financial reporting workflows in Python, reducing reporting time by 40% while improving accuracy.
  • Integrated behavioral and financial data to uncover drivers of revenue trends, guiding more targeted investment strategy.
Python · Finance
May — Sep 2023

HR Management Analyst
Intl. Building Systems Factory

Riyadh, KSA · Prefabricated building solutions
  • Analyzed 10,000+ payroll and performance records in Python & Excel, improving data accuracy by 25%.
  • Built Power BI dashboards visualizing churn, productivity, and compensation to drive HR process optimization.
Power BI · Analytics
May — Aug 2022

Data Analyst
NourNet Data Center

Riyadh, KSA · IT infrastructure & managed hosting
  • Automated data extraction and validation with SQL and Python, eliminating ~30 hours of manual reporting monthly.
SQL · Automation
2021 — 2024

Tutor
Self-Employed

Undergraduate & IB Academic Support
  • Tutored undergraduate courses in microeconomics, macroeconomics, and financial markets, plus IB math, chemistry, business, and economics.
Teaching · Economics
Leadership

President
Human Rights Organization

Student Leadership · Advocacy
  • Led a human-rights focused student organization, coordinating initiatives around awareness, service, and community engagement.
Leadership · Impact
Volunteer

Social Care Worker
Gawad Kalinga Community Development Foundation

Philippines · Housing & Community Development
  • Built and painted homes in underprivileged Filipino villages, helping provide safe, lasting shelter for children and families.
Housing · Service
Volunteer

Social Care Worker
The Outward Bound Trust

Sri Lanka · Education & Community Support
  • Supported education by supplying schools with resources, repainting facilities, enriching libraries, and engaging with local communities.
Education · Service
03 Selected Projects
/ 01

Uber Eats Support Agent

Agentic AI · Conversational Support

A full-stack customer-support AI agent built on a ReAct / LangChain architecture — pairing a hosted LLM with remote embeddings, a ChromaDB knowledge base, SQLite order tracking, and a 10-tool action suite for live order resolution.

LangChainReActChromaDBRAGStreamlit
/ 02

ESG Score Predictor

NLP · Deep Learning

Predicts firm-level ESG performance by combining scraped sustainability-report PDFs with financial data — fusing NLP (TF-IDF, BERT) and machine- and deep-learning models to deliver interpretable ESG forecasts.

BERTTF-IDFscikit-learnPyTorch
/ 03

StayFinder

Python · LLM-Integrated Airbnb Search

An AI-powered Airbnb-style discovery app that combines structured property data with natural-language user preferences to surface better-fit stays and generate explainable recommendations.

PythonLLMRecommendationsData Apps
/ 04

HR Attrition Analytics

Predictive Modeling · Workforce Analytics

Built an end-to-end employee attrition analysis using hypothesis testing, feature selection, outlier detection, and tree-based models to identify retention drivers and translate workforce patterns into actionable HR insights.

Pythonscikit-learnXGBoostHR Analytics
/ 05

Movie Application

Java · Data Insights App

A Java-based data insights application enabling interactive exploration of movie trends across ratings, genres, and box office performance.

JavaData AnalysisInteractive App
/ 06

NBA Performance Analysis

Statistical Modeling · R

A financial and on-court analysis of the Milwaukee Bucks in R — building regression models to identify the drivers of revenue and win percentage, with models explaining over 90% of observed variability.

RRegressionSports Analytics
04 Technical Toolkit

/ Languages & Databases

PythonSQLRJavaStataMATLABSQLiteBigQuery SQL

/ Machine Learning & AI

RegressionClassificationRandom ForestsGradient BoostingXGBoostK-MeansDBSCANNLPTransformersLSTMRAGAgentic AIPrompt EngineeringReinforcement LearningA/B TestingHypothesis Testing

/ Frameworks & Libraries

PandasNumPyscikit-learnPyTorchTensorFlowKerasPySparkLangChainChromaDBMatplotlibSeabornPlotlyStreamlitMLflow

/ Cloud, BI & Developer Tools

Microsoft AzureAzure FundamentalsGCP · Vertex AIBigQueryAWSGitGitHubJupyterTableauPower BIExcelVercelHTML/CSS

/ Finance & Quantitative Investing

Portfolio TheoryRisk & Return AnalysisMean-Variance OptimizationEfficient FrontierCAPMBeta & AlphaDerivativesOptions PricingHedgingVaRExpected ShortfallCredit RiskLiquidity RiskBasel RegulationFinancial Modeling

/ Analytics, Optimization & Business

Data VisualizationDashboardingExploratory Data AnalysisStatistical ModelingFeature EngineeringData CleaningData PipelinesPredictive ModelingOptimizationGurobiPuLP@RISKArcGISBusiness AnalyticsStakeholder Communication
05 Education

Rotman School of Management — University of Toronto

Master of Management Analytics (Data Science & AI) · cGPA 3.9 / 4.0
Rotman Graduate Ambassador · Elected Social Representative · MMA Adversarial Case Competition Winner · Intramurals: Rotman Division 1 Soccer & Mixed Volleyball.
Clubs: Rotman Business Analytics Club · Rotman Asset Management Association · Rotman Sports & Entertainment Association · Rotman Business Technology Association.
2026

University of Toronto

B.Sc. Cognitive Science (Computational Cognition) & Economics (Data Analytics) · cGPA 3.8 / 4.0
4× Dean's List Scholar with High Distinction · Member, Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence Students Association (CASA).
Academic interest: integrating behavioral economics within cognitive science.
2025

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Applied Business Analytics — Decision Making with Data (Certification)
Clustering, deep learning, regression, CART, random forest & predictive modeling across the Netflix, Moneyball, Boston Real Estate & D2Hawkeye cases.
2023

Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals · Score: 984 / 1000
Issued Apr 2026 · Credential ID FEBFA34FE9C154B0 · Microsoft Azure.
Apr 2026

PwC

Data-Driven Decision Making Certificate
Coursera-based certificate focused on using data to support sharper business decisions.
2025

Johns Hopkins University

Mathematics for Machine Learning: Linear Algebra
Certificate covering core linear algebra foundations used across machine learning workflows.
2025

Columbia University

Pre-College Program — Entrepreneurship & Innovation: New Product Development
Program focused on entrepreneurship, innovation, and new product development.
Pre-College
06 Beyond the Data

Away from the terminal, I'm happiest when there's a scoreline involved — whether I'm watching it, playing it, training for it, or trying to model it.

Culer for life

FC Barcelona

Més que un club — more than a club.

Blaugrana through and through. I grew up on the idea that how you win matters as much as winning — patient build-up, players raised through La Masia, and football played like it's meant to be watched. Clásico nights run my calendar, and a good Barça performance can carry a whole week. It's also where my love of sport started turning into a love of the numbers behind it.

El ClásicoLa MasiaTiki-takaCamp Nou bucket-list

On the pitch & the court

I don't just watch — I play. I competed in Division 1 intramural soccer and volleyball at the University of Toronto, where the same instincts that make a good team carry straight into how I work with one.

Soccer · D1Volleyball · D1

Training & HYROX

Off-season, the gym keeps me honest. I train for HYROX-style functional fitness — the blend of endurance and strength that rewards consistency, structure, and showing up. Same discipline, different arena.

HYROXStrengthEndurance

Sport, quantified

This is where the two halves meet. I obsess over Fantasy Premier League, run my own NBA performance models, and optimize March Madness brackets — turning a lifelong fandom into the kind of analytics work I do for a living.

FPLNBA modelsMarch Madness