Summary
Overview
Work History
Education
Skills
Accomplishments
Timeline
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Lucas Van Wyk

Lucas Van Wyk

Data Science Lead
Potchefstroom

Summary

I am currently the Lead Data Scientist in Sand Technologies' insurance arm where we specialise in claims modelling, data platforms, reserving, automatic underwriting and bespoke software solutions for the insurance domain.

Overview

6
6
years of professional experience

Work History

Data Science Lead

Sand Technologies
02.2025 - Current
  • Responsible for overseeing all data science deliverables and driving research and innovation across Sand's insurance arm.
  • Project scoping/Project management
  • Driving client engagement from initial POC to implementation phase.
  • Reference: Sam Movius - smovius@sandtech.com

Senior Data Scientist/ Technical Lead

Sand Technologies
02.2024 - 02.2025
  • Lead the development of an internal Q&A chatbot for consultants in a large SA-based investment firm where we applied RAG/LLMs to customer service to enable customer service agents to search and summarize internal documentation (policy wordings, rates, products) on demand and in real-time.
  • Lead the development of a end-to-end data platform and analytics solution for a European pet insurer moving them from a spreadsheet-based company to having all there data hosted on a custom-built data platform with an analytical layer tailored to there specific business needs.

Data Scientist

ExploreAI
02.2023 - 02.2024
  • Responsible for building bespoke claim prediction models and data analytics solutions for short-term insurance underwriters.
  • Claims modelling
  • Pure premium prediction
  • Machine Learning (Tree based methods, GLMs, DNNs, NLP/LLMs for data enrichment)

Data Engineer

ExploreAI
02.2022 - 02.2023
  • Design and implementation of data platform powering high-level analytics of asset health for a UK utilities company, Thames Water.
  • Optimized data processing by implementing efficient ETL pipelines and streamlining database design.
  • Apache/Spark
  • Reference: Matt Lewis - mlewis@sandtech.com

Junior Researcher

Multilingual Speech Technologies (MuST)
02.2020 - 02.2022
  • Design and implementation of large deep neural networks for speaker recognition and speaker diarisation.
  • Unsupervised Fine-Tuning of Speaker Diarisation Pipelines using Silhouette Coefficients: https://2021.sacair.org.za/proceedings/

Internship

Fourier-E
06.2019 - 12.2019
  • Developed a web-app for production line and inventory management for manufacturers.
  • Big-data analysis.
  • Server administration.

Education

Master of Engineering - Computer And Electronic Engineering

North West University
Potchefstroom
04.2001 -

Bachelor of Engineering - Computer And Electronic Engineering

North West University
Potchefstroom
04.2001 -

Skills

Python

C

Javascript/Typescript

SQL

Pytorch/Cuda

Deep Neural Networs

Spark

PowerBI

Git

CI/CD

Data Engineering

Statistical Modelling

MLOps

Accomplishments

  • High School Eldoraigne: Academically Top 20 (2015)
  • Greenovate Award (Engineering Stream) (2019) https://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/640/198643.html



Timeline

Data Science Lead

Sand Technologies
02.2025 - Current

Senior Data Scientist/ Technical Lead

Sand Technologies
02.2024 - 02.2025

Data Scientist

ExploreAI
02.2023 - 02.2024

Data Engineer

ExploreAI
02.2022 - 02.2023

Junior Researcher

Multilingual Speech Technologies (MuST)
02.2020 - 02.2022

Internship

Fourier-E
06.2019 - 12.2019

Master of Engineering - Computer And Electronic Engineering

North West University
04.2001 -

Bachelor of Engineering - Computer And Electronic Engineering

North West University
04.2001 -

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Lucas Van WykData Science Lead