NielsenIQ
Head of Technology, Sensory AI
–present
Resume
Joe Despres
Head of Technology, Sensory AI at NielsenIQ
I build production machine learning models, with a background in statistics and economics. The models predict how people perceive flavor and texture, and the work runs from training and data pipelines through quality management and model releases.
joedespres.com
Experience
Gastrograph AI
–
Acquired by NielsenIQ in April 2025.
NIQ announcement · SEC filing
Head of Technology
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Lead Data Scientist
–
Data Scientist
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Skills
- Statistics and modeling
- Statistical modeling, hierarchical regression, tree-based methods, embeddings, model evaluation, explainability.
- Production ML
- Prediction pipelines, model versioning, performance monitoring, drift detection, QA automation, release approvals.
- Data
- SQL/PostgreSQL, pipeline design, data quality controls, batch processing, observability, cloud migration.
- Languages and platforms
- R, Python, TypeScript, AWS, Azure, GitHub Actions.
- Leadership
- Technical roadmaps, ML quality governance, and coordination across product, engineering, and data science.
Education
Michigan State University
M.S., Statistics 2022
Grand Valley State University
B.S., Economics 2020