Brock’s Goodman School of Business is like a second home for Lola Abduvaitova’s family.

The MSc student is the latest in her line of siblings to attend the Goodman School for a graduate program.

Two of her siblings, Abdu (MBA ’09) and Mia (MBA ’16) hold Goodman MBA degrees and work at a major Canadian bank in the area of data and analytics. A third sibling, Adkham, is currently working on his MBA degree here, as well.

Lola graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) this year with an undergraduate degree in mathematics.

Originally from Uzbekistan, she made her way to MIT to follow in the footsteps of her father, a mathematics professor who “is a big inspiration for all of us,” she said.

Her goal to become a professor was a natural choice, and research is something she has been focused on for a long time.

“My passion for research began in high school. I worked on an independent math project and presented my project at a university research conference and they published my abstract in the conference journal, making me even more interested in research,” she said.

Her career goal led her to Goodman’s Master of Science in Management (MSc) program, where she is looking forward to applying her math and computer programming knowledge.

“I learned how heavily research focused the MSc program is. After I finish this program, it’s going to give me a lot of opportunities to continue my research and teaching, and get into a PhD program to continue my pathway in this profession,” she said.

As for which field of academia she will pursue, she sees good research opportunities in data science.

“In my junior year of college, I noticed that companies are putting a lot of emphasis on data science and looking at it as a tool to solve some of the most challenging problems they are facing. This field is developing really fast and there’s a lot of attraction both from academia and industry in it,” she said.

Part of her decision to attend Goodman was the new Centre for Business Analytics, which started operation this month.

“I was very pleased to hear that it is now open and I hope I’ll take advantage of it while I’m here,” she said.

Although she’s only been at Brock for a month and a half, she says she already feels at home and says, “I love the campus and its location. It’s very beautiful here.”