ATABAK MARDAN
Senior Data Scientist & Systems Architect

Building shipped
data products at scale.

I lead end-to-end Machine Learning, GenAI Agentic Workflows, and Spatial Analytics at Choice Hotels, backed by a PhD in Transportation Systems and Operations Research.

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Network flow node simulation (Hover to interact)

Core Competencies

Machine Learning XGBoost / Bayes

Predictive models, customer lifetime value optimization, time-series forecasting, discrete-choice models, and Monte Carlo simulation.

Agentic GenAI Claude / Bedrock

Designing multi-stage agentic LLM pipelines, prompt engineering workflows, semantic search, and automated feature generation.

Data Engineering Spark / AWS

Scalable ETL pipelines, data warehousing (Redshift, Glue, Lambda), SQL optimization, and large-scale entity resolution.

Work Experience

Data Scientist III

Choice Hotels International

Feb 2023 - Present

Deploying ML, GenAI, and analytics products on AWS utilizing customer databases, partnering cross-functionally with marketing and sales:

  • Sales Lead Scoring Platform: Engineered an LLM/ML pipeline to rank B2B opportunities. Delivered via Tableau/Salesforce, cutting research time for 6,000 properties from hours to minutes.
  • Customer Lifetime Value Model: Constructed an XGBoost CLV scoring model on 50M+ transactions, increasing segment accuracy by 25% to optimize $100M+ in fee decisions.
  • External Data Matching Pipeline: Created a multi-stage entity-resolution engine utilizing fuzzy strings and LLM vector similarity on AWS Glue, boosting matching accuracy from 50% to 96%.
  • Climate Risk Dashboard: Synthesized multi-source environmental data (charging, solar, climate) into property KPIs with LLM-generated summaries via AWS Bedrock.

Lead Transportation Engineer & Network Analyst

ICF International

Sep 2021 - Feb 2023

Delivered advanced analytics and geospatial pipelines for federal and state DOT clients (FHWA, NYSDOT, VDOT):

  • National Transit Inventory: Designed a Python/GIS quality-audit system for GTFS transit data across the FHWA national inventory.
  • Accessibility Modeling: Built isochrone models to assess walking/biking access gaps for NYSDOT transit corridors in the Bronx.
  • Travel-Time Reliability: Developed and calibrated public travel reliability metrics in R for Virginia's Office of Intermodal Planning.

Transportation Systems Modeler & Data Specialist

C&M Associates

Aug 2019 - Sep 2021

Managed simulation pipelines, pricing forecasting, and demand analysis for toll roads:

  • Revenue Forecasting: Built long-term demand and traffic forecasts for major infrastructure projects, including the I-495 extension.
  • Sensitivities & Calibration: Modeled Dulles Toll Road 30-year pricing scenarios using calibrated Python/Excel algorithms.

Graduate Research Assistant

George Mason University

Aug 2017 - May 2020

Cleaned raw sensor database feeds and developed a VDOT Tableau traffic visualization dashboard from scratch, implementing sensor reliability indicators.

Education

PhD, Transportation Systems

George Mason University (2025)

MSc, Data Analytics Engineering

George Mason University (2019)

MSc, Transportation Systems

Middle East Technical University (2015)

Publications

• Expressed Toll Lane Pricing Policy (2024)

• Dynamic Pricing Toll Roads in the US (2024)

• Hidden Markov Modeling of Travel Behavior (2024)

• Generalized Bayesian Traffic Reliability (2021)

[Google Scholar Profile]

Personal Projects

Interactive systems, models, and analytics dashboards built to explore public data and showcase data science solutions.

D.C. Crime Intelligence Portal LIVE INSTANCE

A real-time command dashboard of crime rates in Washington D.C. Consumes public Open Data DC APIs directly from the browser using parallelized statistical queries. Maps coordinates onto standard markers and cluster networks, or renders a density heatmap, paired with timelines and data exports.

Leaflet.js Chart.js ArcGIS API Vanilla CSS
AM

Atabak Mardan, PhD

PhD in Transportation Systems & Operations Research

I received my PhD in Transportation Systems from George Mason University, with my doctoral thesis focusing on the modeling and optimization of dynamic pricing toll roads (Express Toll Lanes). My research covers traveler route choices, traffic simulation under dynamic fees, and travel time reliability. I specialize in designing and deploying operations research frameworks, statistical learning, and spatial analysis tools.

I am highly passionate about transport economics, traffic flow physics, and network optimization, and I am always ready to collaborate, discuss new ideas, and consult on related data products.

Selected Publications & Research Output

Publication Title Citations Year

Google Scholar Profile

Metric All Since 2021
Citations 81 80
h-index 3 3
i10-index 3 3

Insights & Case Studies

Deep-dives into machine learning architecture, entity matching algorithms, and shipping data products at scale.

Get in Touch

Let's discuss predictive systems, operations research, spatial modeling, or data architecture.

Location Reston, Virginia (Washington D.C. Area)
Email atabak.mardan@gmail.com
LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/amardan