Cynthia Ukawu
Cynthia is a geospatial software engineer with a passion for teaching and making technical concepts approachable. Currently working as a backend software engineer, she develops innovative geospatial solutions that solve real-world problems. Cynthia has a strong background in Python and data science, with experience mentoring students in data analytics at Springboard and teaching Python to beginners at Masterschool.
In addition to her professional work, Cynthia is an experienced public speaker. She’s presented at PyTexas and at Arlington Code-The-Curb on her “Park and Stride” project—a web app that helps commuters integrate walking into their daily routines. Her approachable teaching style combines hands-on learning with practical insights.
Outside of work, Cynthia is passionate about graph theory, computer vision, and geospatial data. She’s currently exploring the intersection of LiDAR technology and urban mobility. When she’s not coding or mentoring, Cynthia enjoys dancing Samba and blogging about ways beginners can break into tech on her website, cynscode.com.
Sessions
Tired of waiting for massive datasets to load on your local machine? In this beginner-friendly tutorial, we’ll explore how to scale your data analysis skills from pandas to PySpark using a real-world anime dataset. We’ll walk through the basics of distributed computing, discuss why Spark was created, and demonstrate the benefits of working with PySpark for big data tasks—including reading, cleaning, and transforming millions of records with ease. By the end of this workshop, you’ll understand how PySpark harnesses cluster computing to handle large-scale data and you’ll be comfortable applying these techniques to your own projects.
Participant Requirements:
- A laptop (any OS) with an internet connection
- A Google account (to access Colab notebooks and slides)
- Familiarity with Python and pandas
Here's the link to the Google Colab to follow along 👇🏾
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1fi0cTQ1NIE5kDEH0ynp2sqDuVeiBJJWU?usp=sharing
Here are the slides 👇🏾
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11JIih1VzLxTJ9O6PeGzqD_e8vumTZQmw/view?usp=sharing