Mikhael Gaster
About Me
Researcher with experience in data science, climate finance, corporate governance, and consulting.
I use my skills to benefit people and the planet. I'm currently leading international climate and finance projects at the Jain Family Institute; in the past, I've conducted academic research with scholars at Oxford and UBC, created models for the government of British Columbia, and freelanced.
Current Work
Data Science Research Associate
2025 - Present | The Jain Family Institute
Leading a team in conducting quantitative and qualitative/strategic research to accelerate the energy transition in developing economies. Using economic modelling, coding, and qualitative research to analyze complex economic, environmental, and financial information.
Lead Developer ← Data Science Research Fellow
2023 - Present | Center for Active Stewardship
Full stack lead developer for our flagship database, which makes a $100k/year commercial product available to the public. Responsibilities include parsing, normalizing, and correcting data from public financial filings; creating and deploying our database via a (soon to be public) API; and creating an interactive front-end display of the database. Utilizing a wide range of tools including Python, SQL, LLMs, text embedding, clustering, FastAPI, docker, and graph algorithms.
Also lead developer of our climate proxy voting ratings system.
Past Experience
NLP Research Assistant
2023 - 2024 | The Industrial Policy Group (Oxford + UBC)
Spearheaded the development and improvement of text classification workflows underpinning landmark research papers. Improved model accuracy from 87% to 94%. Derived feature importance from fine-tuned LLMs. Used LLMs to extract and normalize entity names, descriptions, and abbreviations from text. Implemented professional best practices, including version control and testing protocols.
Data Science and Analytics Consultant
2021 - 2022 | Deetken Insight Consulting
Developed a comparative static CGE model to estimate the economic impacts of BC's climate policies on sectors, households, demographic groups, commodities, and more. My proposal won the $150k bid.
Other projects included a forensic audit of a major utility's environmental/financial modelling, and a project described as "hands down one of, if not the, best consulting engagements we have commissioned."
Education
M.A. in Economics
2020-2021
The University of British Columbia
GPA: 4.3 / 4.33
B.A. in Econ & Math
2015-2019
The University of British Columbia
GPA: 4.0 / 4.33
Contact Me
Reach out if you want to collaborate, inquire, or connect!
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