Hrag Balian

As vice president of data science, Hrag drives the effort to enhance and improve analytic offerings with new capabilities and efficiencies. He loves tinkering with existing datasets to find new ways of extracting meaning and insights. LRW, a Material Company, is awash in data, which makes it the perfect place for him to work.

Prior to arriving at LRW, Hrag earned a Ph.D. from Columbia University, where he built micro-models of social behavior. His doctoral dissertation showed how large-scale armed conflict has very similar dynamics to conflict among more primitive animals (like chickens) when establishing pecking orders. He later completed a post-doc at the Yale School of Management. He has won several awards and distinctions, including a Distinguished Dissertation, a Tilly Award for Excellence and a Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada Doctoral Fellowship.

Hrag is originally from Toronto but is now proud to call Los Angeles home. When he’s not crunching numbers, he’s either watching reality TV shows (Love Island is his new favorite) or looking through Pinterest for home design ideas.