Hi Teo, can you tell us something more about yourself and what you study?

Certainly! My name is Teo van Lier, 20 years old and currently in my final year of Applied Information Technology at HoGent. I knew from an early age that I wanted to do something with computers. An internship at Accurat.ai is an extremely fitting way to finalize my studies, especially with my major in AI & data engineering that I have now almost finished. 

How did you get in touch with Accurat?

As a HoGent student, we receive a list of all the internship possibilities. Accurat appeared to be the optimal place for various reasons. First of all, my preference was to do an internship at a start-up. Here, I could really work with raw data. This connects more closely to the career path I want to take. Additionally, Accurat’s location, Merelbeke, is close to Ghent, the city in which my dorm and university are located. 

How does an internship at Accurat add value to your professional development?

I have certainly broadened my technical expertise in multiple directions. I already knew computer programming languages like Python thanks to my training at HoGent but this was not at the level as it is used here at Accurat. Working in a team and the reality of daily stand-ups are an unexpected added value to my internship experience. In a real working environment like Accurat you learn to collaborate, you learn to assist your colleagues and you learn to support each other.

What gets you most excited about coming to work? What do you look forward to?

I really get to use and expand my AI and data engineering knowledge working here. The internship helps me to further enhance my technical skills in programming languages. Furthermore, the great atmosphere, the challenging work and the daily table football games during lunch break are nice bonuses.

How does your mentor support you in the assignments that you’re doing here? Does he meet your expectations?

Steven, Accurat's CTO, is my supervisor. He provides me with my tasks and assignments. I can go to him with major questions about my bachelor's thesis, how I should approach certain technical matters etc. In the beginning it was challenging because you have limited knowledge about the way of working. However, as the training progresses and with sufficient support from my mentor and coworkers all assignments are being accomplished.

How is it like to work with the company’s team?

Everyone within Accurat is talkative and cooperative. We have a little table football league going on. Let’s also not forget about the regular pancakes on Wednesdays, birthdays or basically any other occasion. A pleasant working atmosphere with only nice colleagues.

Tell us about a recent project you worked on.

As a data engineer intern, my task is to make raw data usable to data scientists. At the moment, I am putting visualization software such as Cumul.io, Views and BigQuerry into one well-organized platform with the goal that datasets and POIs can be calculated more quickly. When this project is finished, there will be more structure and reliability in Accurat’s software systems. It feels good to have some real impact within the company. 

Any funny moments or stories with co-workers that you could share?

Here at Accurat, you have to be careful with what you say. Every funny statement you make at work or during lunch breaks could be registered in a slackbot by your colleagues. Accurat’s data team created a button during a hackaton. Whenever it is pressed, the employee’s quote gets sent to everyone through slack. There are already a couple of funny quotes from myself in the slackbot. Fortunately I am not the only one.

(Why) Do you believe in Accurat’s solutions?

I haven't heard of other companies that can offer such valuable data like offline consumer behavior, loyalty insights, competitive benchmarking, etc. It is important for retailers in different sectors to understand the shopping patterns of their customers as well as the drive-to-store impact, how willing people are to travel to your shop. The uniqueness of Accurat’s product along with company culture makes me believe the company has a bright future ahead.

If we want to look for you, where will we find you? What is your favourite POI?

Well, apart from my professional career, I live in Merchtem and my hobbies are primarily being a leader in the local KSA youth movement and a board member of the Ifi youth center. This is a low-threshold meeting place where every young person from the age of 14 is welcome and these would be the POI’s where you would find me the most.