MahikoKonishi

Lead data scientist and researcher in cognitive science

I’m interested in humans and all things data: experimentation, statistics, and solving interesting problems, including the ones on a bouldering wall.

Mahiko Konishi smiling on a sunny street, wearing a white t-shirt

About

I’m a data scientist with a background in cognitive neuroscience. My PhD looked at mind-wandering, what the brain is up to when attention drifts away from the task at hand, and I’ve been designing experiments and analysing human behaviour ever since.

These days I lead data science for Blitz at Voodoo, working on game fairness, matchmaking, retention and monetization. Before that I built and led a data science team at Jellysmack. I care about good experimental design, honest statistics, and teams where testing ideas is the normal way of working.

Experience

  1. 2025–now

    Lead Data Scientist

    Blitz (Voodoo)

    Game fairness, retention, RTP and monetization. A/B testing and simulations on large-scale gameplay data, and optimizing matchmaking algorithms.

  2. 2022–2025

    Lead Data Scientist

    Jellysmack

    Led a team of six data scientists, two business analysts and an ML engineer working on social media video analytics. Built a culture of continuous experimentation and shipped ML models for internal stakeholders.

  3. 2022

    Data Scientist

    Jellysmack

    Ad-hoc analyses on social media data, A/B test design and analysis, and led an internal statistics course.

  4. 2020–2021

    Teaching Assistant

    Université de Paris

    Taught experimental design and statistical analysis.

  5. 2018–2021

    Researcher

    École Normale Supérieure, Paris

    Experiment design and analytics on human behavioural data.

Education

  1. 2013–2017

    PhD in Neuroscience

    University of York, UK

    Thesis on the neural correlates of mind-wandering. Also president and captain of the university’s futsal club.

  2. 2009–2012

    MSc in Cognitive Sciences

    Università degli Studi di Padova, Italy

    Graduated cum laude with a thesis on human attention.

Research

See all publications on Google Scholar

Toolkit

Methods
Experimental design, A/B testing, statistics, simulations, machine learning
Tools
Python, R, SQL, these days Claude I guess
Languages
English, Italian, French, Spanish

Contact

The best way to reach me is by email. I’m always happy to talk about experimentation, statistics, or a good climbing spot.