Dhruv Mehndiratta

[email protected]  ·  linkedin.com/in/dhruvmehndiratta  ·  github.com/dmehndiratta

[ EDUCATION ]
University of Waterloo 2024 – 2026
MA Economics and Grad. Diploma in Data Analytics (CDASH)
Econometrics, Machine Learning, Applied Microeconometrics, Time Series, Monetary Economics
McGill University 2020 – 2024
BA Mathematics and Economics (Double Major), Political Science (Minor)
[ EXPERIENCE ]
Policy Research Assistant — Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) May 2025 – May 2026
  • Built end-to-end causal inference pipeline (DoWhy, Pearl's do-calculus), encoding confounders via explicit DAG; recovered backdoor-adjusted price elasticity of +0.119 on a global weekly series (n=314), with all three refutation tests passed
  • Constructed 106-country monthly panel (n=6,021) from CBECI/CCAF data; estimated panel OLS with entity fixed effects and entity-clustered standard errors; direct price effect −0.368 (p<0.001, R²=0.995)
  • Performed mediation decomposition through the hashrate channel; tested asymmetric response to price shocks — Wald F(1,236)=44.57, p<0.001
  • Authored policy brief currently under peer review
Financial Officer — Ontario Ministry of Health Sep – Dec 2025
  • Performed reconciliation and anomaly investigation across healthcare provider portfolios; identified discrepancies contributing to recovery of $7M+ in public funds
  • Built Excel and VBA automation (VLOOKUP, INDEX/MATCH, SUMIFS, COUNTIF, AVERAGEIF) to systematize monthly reconciliation; reduced cycle time and manual error rate
  • Prepared executive-level reconciliation reports and variance memoranda for management
Research Assistant — Dr. Anindya Sen, University of Waterloo Mar – Jun 2026
  • Constructed panel of ~8,000 job postings (UK, Canada, Australia) to estimate AI-era skill wage premia using hedonic wage regression
  • Designed data-quality validation that surfaced parsing errors spanning five orders of magnitude, materially altering point estimates
  • Implemented ETL workflows in Python (pandas, regex-based salary parsing); structured analytical pipeline for reproducibility across jurisdictions
Teaching Assistant — Department of Economics, University of Waterloo Sep 2024 – Apr 2025
  • Supported ~150 students through tutorials, office hours, and grading in quantitative economics and econometrics coursework
  • Developed supplementary problem sets and review sessions
[ PROJECTS ]
Transit Access × Airbnb Pricing in Montreal LIVE
  • Three-stage nested hedonic OLS on 8,778 Inside Airbnb listings with STM GTFS geospatial features (HC3 SE, neighborhood FE); cross-validated with LightGBM and SHAP decomposition
  • Identified sign reversal in rail-distance coefficient across specifications, demonstrating that the apparent transit premium was a centrality premium
  • Deployed interactive Streamlit dashboard with pre-computed artifacts for real-time filtering of coefficients, SHAP rankings, and diagnostics
REM × BIXI: Causal Impact of Light Rail on Bike-Share Demand LIVE
  • Processed ~48.5M BIXI trip records (~13 GB) via chunked Pandas into station-week panel of ~124K rows; deduplicated stations by coordinates across BIXI's renaming history
  • Applied nearest-neighbor matching (k=5) on log pre-period activity and geographic coordinates; matched estimates revealed ~80% of apparent naive effect was confounding bias
  • Final TWFE estimates: +10.4% (95% CI [-5.7%, +29.2%]) and +2.7% ([-11.5%, +19.1%]) for two REM openings; station-clustered SE throughout
Portfolio Risk Engine IN PROGRESS
  • Computing VaR three ways (historical, parametric, Monte Carlo with GARCH(1,1) volatility), Expected Shortfall at 95% and 99%, and formal Kupiec/Christoffersen backtests
Bitcoin Mining Energy Demand CIGI — CONFIDENTIAL
  • Full details described in the policy brief (under peer review); summary findings in the research section of this site
[ LEADERSHIP ]
VP Finance — McGill Society of Undergraduate Mathematics Students (SUMS) 2022 – 2024
  • Managed ~$10,000 annual budget; secured $5,000+ in departmental and external funding through grant proposals
  • Prepared financial reports and forecasts for executive team; served a student body of 1,000+
[ TECHNICAL SKILLS ]
LANGUAGES
Python, SQL, R, Stata, MATLAB
ECONOMETRICS & ML
Causal inference, panel data, hedonic regression, DiD, IV, GARCH, time series; Scikit-learn, LightGBM, TensorFlow, PyTorch; DoWhy, EconML, linearmodels, statsmodels
VISUALIZATION & BI
Power BI (Microsoft Certified), Tableau, Streamlit, IBM Cognos; Excel (advanced), Power Query, VBA
AI & TOOLING
LLMs, Claude Code, agentic AI systems, REST APIs, prompt engineering
[ COMMUNITY ]
  • Volunteer, Supportive Housing of Waterloo — 2025–present
  • Volunteer tutor (mathematics), India — 2018–2020
[ LANGUAGES ]
English · French · Hindi · German

Tailored versions available on request. Last updated June 2026.