Sarah Sieber - Data Science Consultant at STAT-UP

Sarah?studied sociology with a minor in Statistics and completed her master's degree in Statistics at LMU Munich. During her Masters, she gained experience in data science as an intern at STAT-UP. Afterwards, she started to work full-time as a Data Science Consultant at STAT-UP. In her free time, she likes reading, running, and skiing.

What is your daily job at STAT-UP??

My daily work at STAT-UP includes R programming, statistical modelling, project management (definition and implementation of projects, defining offers, task allocation), preparation of results (reports, presentations, Shiny Apps), and meetings with clients, where I discuss and define requirements of projects, discuss issues arising from the projects, and present results.

Could you tell us about one of the projects that you worked on at STAT-UP?

One of the projects I worked on so far is an Energy Demand Forecast. The goal of the project is the forecasting of energy that must be supplied in district heating networks. The purpose was to secure the energy supply and increase the operational efficiency of the network, thereby contributing positively to climate protection. We used a combination of historical thermal energy consumption data and other operational metrics collected on the household level using smart meters with corresponding heat supply and weather data for the prediction of thermal energy consumption. With this data, we developed a user-friendly data-driven prototype (Shiny App) that optimizes district heating networks by using smart meter data and ARIMA (Autoregressive Moving Average) models.

We published our results in a joint whitepaper with the client.

What makes these tasks interesting and what are the challenges?

An interesting challenge of the project is the systematic processing and analysis of real-time, high-frequency, and fine-area meter data to systematically investigate the potential of such data. A new thing to me was learning about the complex operation of district heating networks and its application in statistical modelling. It was very exciting to work together with district heating experts on a method to make the district heating supply more energy efficient in the long run.

What makes STAT-UP special?

I think the fun and easy-going working atmosphere in our team and working on a wide range of interesting topics (from forecasting of energy to medical research projects) make STAT-UP very special. I also appreciate the possibility for everyone to take responsibility from early on.