Ethan [Nelson] Lyon

003 / resume

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experience


Senior Data Scientist — NRG Energy Nov 2025 — present

Houston, TX

  • Ownership of fraud and bad debt detection + mitigation products.
  • Serving as fraud subject matter expert across the organization.
Data Scientist — NRG Energy Apr 2022 — Nov 2025

Houston, TX

  • Developed multiple end-to-end ML models for fraud prediction and mitigation, including novel realtime fraud detection via API — saving over $10MM annually.
  • Honored with the Innovation "Game Changer" Award out of 300 total nominees.
  • Conducted analyses and advised business on fraud mitigation strategies in an adversarial environment.
  • Leveraged payment and credit data to advise new fraud and customer acquisition strategies.
  • Utilized causal analysis to determine effectiveness of credit policy and deposit strategy.
  • Used PySpark, Databricks, and Azure DevOps to build models and conduct analyses.
Data Science Intern — Chevron Jun — Aug 2019

Houston, TX

  • Wrote scripts for automatic data science model deployment to Microsoft Azure cloud.
  • Improved performance of on-site server cluster by deep analysis of local queries.
Software Engineer & Data Science Intern — Rakuten Inc. Jun — Dec 2018

Tokyo, Japan

  • Worked on data science projects related to fraud detection, prophet forecasting, and budget automation.
  • Created a UI to display relevant KPIs in a new ecosystem.
Summer Research Intern — VR Tactile Feedback Device — Tokyo Institute of Technology Summer 2017

Tokyo, Japan

  • Created a device to provide more realistic tactile feedback in VR using Arduino.

education


M.E.E. — Master's in Data Science (Electrical Engineering)

Rice University · GPA: 3.93 / 4.0

May 2021
B.S. — Electrical Engineering

Rice University

Dec 2018

skills


Python Advanced
SQL Advanced
PySpark Advanced
Machine Learning Proficient
Fraud Mitigation Proficient
Azure DevOps Proficient
LaTeX Intermediate
R Intermediate
Japanese Intermediate (N3)

honors & activities


Winter 2026

Innovation "Game Changer" Award — NRG Energy

Selected out of 300 nominees for NRG's first realtime risk mitigation ML model.

Winter 2017

Japanese Language Proficiency Test — N3 Certificate

Summer 2016

Center for Language and Intercultural Communication

Studied Japanese at Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan.

Fall 2013

Eagle Scout