Junior Burssens Email & Phone Number

Being studious, I always wanted to be an inventor. But I was wrong. Inventing is not my thing; I like exploring.At eighteen years old, I joined the army and learned how individual responsibility advances the team.My next job as an (airport) security guard during 9/11 and the Sabena crisis taught me how to work in crisis situations.Aiming higher, I earned a Master's degree in Criminology, which landed me a job as a (PhD) researcher and teacher at Ghent University's Faculty of Economics.As a criminologist, I re-educated myself in economics and acquired quantitative research skills:* Key theoretical skills: basic -, time series - and spatial econometrics. * Key technical skills: Excel VBA to manipulate raw datasets, GIS to handle geographical data and R for statistics.Main takeaway? I'm a computer wizard.I really shine in finding solutions to our data needs. For our fiscal research, we needed housing prices with amenities and, most importantly, exact address. These data are impossible to get from government sources, so I got the idea to scrape the data from real estate advertisements, implemented it, wrote the code to clean and geocode the data and constructed geographically and time-organized datasets for my colleagues and me. A few years later, I negotiated with a major real estate website to get the data directly from them, further improving our existing datasets.I've had the luck to be actively involved in the management of the research projects I worked on. These experiences showed me how better management leads to better results by efficiently focusing efforts.I taught introductory economics exercises to about 600 students a year. On top of that, I've successfully counseled more than 60 bachelor and master theses. Doing research and teaching, writing and presenting in English and Dutch has become second nature to me.Personal family circumstances required me to find another job that allowed for greater flexibility and support, preserving and applying the skills I'd aquired thus far. Combining my knowledge of criminology and public economics, the perfect match presented itself as a drinking water regulator. There, I puzzled over financial statements, optimized our data flow and strived for elegance in developing and implementing policy.Nearly eight years later, I found the opportunity to expand my scope by exploring solutions for the whole agency as a business analyst, implementing and optimizing processes as new regulations arise and environments change.

Listed skills include Research, Criminology, Spss, Statistics, and 28 others.

• 

  Business Analist

  Vlaamse Milieumaatschappij

  Nov 2023 - Present - Aalst, Flemish Region, Belgium