Meet Our Fellows Blog Series: Jenny Biechele-Speziale
I was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. As a very introverted child, I spent most of my childhood reading and building miniature medieval war machines to sell to my classmates. Since I always had an avid interest in math and technology, I knew I wanted to pursue a career in the STEM field. Desiring to see more than just my home state, I left Kentucky to attend Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. There, I pursued a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering because of its versatility. Through my coursework, I discovered I was more interested in the sub-discipline of operations research and applied math, rather than traditional industrial engineering. This prompted me to join a research lab which provided me with the resources and guidance to independently research my own project: the application of machine learning (specifically convolutional long-short term memory neural networks (CNN-LSTM)) to predict wildfire paths. While I greatly enjoyed this experience in academia, I felt that the direct application of research on policy was either very slow or sometimes never happened. Because I wanted to make more of an impact and also have aspirations to one day start my own business, I decided to get more industry experience.
After graduation, I was searching for an opportunity where I could create impact and the build skills required to be a successful entrepreneur. I learned of enFocus through a Purdue alumnus, and decided to apply for their two-year fellowship. At enFocus, I have found that the variety of projects, and the diverse backgrounds of the other fellows make every day interesting. Through my fellowship, I am also learning what it takes to create a successful small business, which I hope to start during my time here.
In my freetime, I’m making a reinforcement learning stock trading algorithm with my husband, and creating an illustrated fantasy novel I hope to publish someday. I am also looking forward to further exploring the South Bend-Elkhart region with some of the other fellows.
Learn more about the 2020-2022 enFocus Fellows weekly in our Meet Our Fellows Blog Series.