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Kia Ora!

I'm Sam Mata, a data analyst and researcher based in Wellington, New Zealand.

I try to experiment with new technologies, analyse public datasets, and creating interactive tools. Here you'll find:

  • About my background & education
  • Projects, most of them finished
  • Writing, about things I'm thinking about

Ngā mihi,

Sam

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01  /  About

About

“Good software is a conversation that outlives the people who started it.”

I develop tools for researchers. Almost all of my work is digital, working on machine learning, visual programming, and data analysis.

My honours and doctoral research investigated novel multi-tree genetic programming techniques to improve long-term forecasting of changes in the Antarctic ice sheets—conducted in close collaboration with the Centre for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (CDSAI) and the Antarctic Research Centre (ARC) through the 2024 Smart Ideas Endeavour Fund.

Following an intensive initial year of doctoral research, I made the conscious decision to transition out of academia to pursue other work. I am deeply thankful for the opportunities both CDSAI and ARC have given me.

Download the full CV

Education & Experience

  1. Doctoral Researcher

    Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

    Developed novel genetic programming algorithms for improved long-term forecasting of the Antarctic ice sheets. Concluded early without grant of degree

  2. Contracted Researcher

    Antarctic Research Centre (ARC)

    Developed machine learning tools for automated sediment analysis and 3D segmentation

  3. BSc (Hons) in Computer Science

    Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

    First Class, First Division Applying advanced machine learning methods on high noise environmental data.

  4. Academic Tutor

    School of Engineering & Computer Science (ECS)

    Teaching & mentoring undergraduate computer science

  5. BSc in Computer Science

    Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

    Foundational computer science, algorithms & systems

  6. Full Stack Developer

    Ordino

    Commercial full-stack application development & databases

School

ECS

School of Engineering & Computer Science

Centre

CDSAI

Centre for Data Science & Artificial Intelligence

Centre

ARC

Antarctic Research Centre

02  /  Projects

Projects

Research you can run. Every figure on this page is generated — click one to reshuffle it.

  1. CHROMATIC

    A collection of small intuitive quick-fire games for while you wait.

    • Next.js
    • TypeScript
    • Web Games
    Try it online →

  2. Tuhi

    Automatically transcribe video recordings into plain text for free.

    • Python
    • Speech-to-Text
    • Hugging Face
    Try it online → GitHub ↗

  3. Rūma

    Webapp for planning and measuring room layouts with custom furniture.

    • Next.js
    • TypeScript
    • Canvas
    Try it online → GitHub ↗

  4. Motokā

    Archived

    An interactive web app for custom analysis of F1 data.

    • R
    • Shiny
    • Python
    • F1 Analytics
    Launch app →

  5. Huaketo

    Archived

    An interactive web app for visualising worldwide trends in Covid-19 data.

    • Python
    • Vue
    • TypeScript
    • Data Viz
    Try it online → GitHub ↗

03  /  Writing

Writing

Visual essays & interactive articles exploring data, history, and computational methods.

  1. Hītori

    Unreleased

    A visual article on the history of New Zealand settlement and population over time.

    • Visual Article
    • Data Journalism
    • Interactive
    Currently being built

  2. 3DAI

    An interactive article on current methods of scanning and generating 3D environments with AI, including neural radiance fields and gaussian splatting.

    • Next.js
    • TypeScript
    • NeRF
    • Gaussian Splatting
    Try it online → GitHub ↗

04  /  Contact

Say hello

If you've got an idea you want to explore, or a problem you want to fix, get in touch and I'll give it a go.