People / Students / Class of 2027
Ayush Tharval graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2023 with a B.S. in Economics and a minor in Data Science. There, he authored a Senior Honors Thesis researching the impact of COVID-19 school reopenings on parental labor supply, utilizing difference-in-differences and logit regression models. He also served as the Research Team Lead for the UNC-CH Fed Challenge, guiding peers through macroeconomic policy recommendations and data-driven discussions.
Ayush worked as a Data Analyst most recently at Cencora, a major pharmaceutical distribution company, and previously at Penn Wharton Budget Model, an economic research center. At Cencora, he built sales and supply chain forecasting models in Databricks using Prophet, XGBoost, LightGBM, and ARIMA, tuning parameters to minimize error and achieve under 5% monthly WMAPEs, while also evaluating internal generative AI chatbot usage metrics and designing dynamic Power BI dashboards. He transitioned to industry from PWBM, where he developed tax data infrastructure and analyzed semiconductor investment trends under the CHIPS Act, to work with faster-evolving ML tools and more directly influence operational business outcomes.
At MLDS, Ayush is eager to strengthen his grasp of applied ML frameworks, advanced statistical modeling, and model deployment. He looks forward to collaborating on real-world business problems through the Practicum and Capstone projects, ultimately working toward a career as a Data Scientist focused on supply chain and pricing optimization or demand forecasting. Outside of his technical pursuits, Ayush enjoys genre fiction, board games, and tennis.
