At INSAID, we create accomplished and empowered Data Leaders. We groom our students to dominate the world of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence and reshape their future. We value what our students bring to the table. We share their vision and support them during their journey and ensure that they carve a niche for themselves.
We’re proud to have tutored exceptional students all across India. Today, one such exceptional student, Sudeep Raj stands in the spotlight.
Student Name: Sudeep Raj
Batch: GCD – August 2018
Total years of experience: 3 years
Area of expertise: IT solutions
Malvika: Hi Sudeep, thank you for joining us, Can you start off the interview by telling us about your professional journey so far?
Sudeep: Currently, I am working as a Senior Software Engineer at Persistent Systems. My role includes a lot of Java development and using Python and Bigfix. Bigfix is a security product of IBM. We write the script for checking the compliance of all Bigfix machines.
Malvika: What got you interested in Data Science and Machine Learning?
Sudeep: I was exposed to videos and content that used predictive models to analyze large datasets and derive value. The lucidity was such that even non-technical folks could get the best out of it. That got me interested in machine learning. I can’t wait to learn machine learning for predictive analysis.
Malvika: Are there any current trends in this space that you’re looking out for?
Sudeep: In the healthcare industry, I noticed on Kaggle, there is a lot of scope. I’m particularly interested in determining the presence of diseases in patients using their medical history and family history. I think predictive modeling would come to a revolutionary stage when we can achieve that in the healthcare space.
Malvika: Can you talk about the goal of Data Science?
Sudeep: Data forecasting is definitely the goal of Data Science. Using historical data to predict something like climate change in the world, is the future. Accessing historical data to predict natural calamities and minimize damage will have a huge impact.
Malvika: Are there any Artificial Intelligence applications that interest you?
Sudeep: Chatbots have been a massive phenomenon and very helpful to organizations. They have cut down on support time and increased productivity as well. An example is PhonePe, their support system is completely automated and the chatbots deal with most of the preliminary queries by themselves. Only the ones requiring human interaction are transferred to calls. This way a lot of time is saved.
Malvika: Are there any Artificial Intelligence influencers or Data Scientists that inspire you?
Sudeep: There is definitely Andrew Ng. I have been following him since college. I had taken a course in machine learning at the time in MATLAB and Octave. Python was totally alien to me. At the time, his blogs helped me a lot to get a clearer understanding when I was just starting out.
Malvika: Sudeep, which is your favorite machine learning algorithm?
Sudeep: Decision trees are most useful, I feel. Decision trees are conditional and obviously help in making decisions based on probability. If I consider hospital data with age, sex, cholesterol levels and two drugs are being prescribed by the doctors. If we need to segregate the data based on age, we make age as the root node and the model categorizes the data into young, middle age and senior citizens. This way we can use historical data to prescribe either of the two drugs to the people falling under the various age groups. This can be done by the decision tree classifier library. The internal calculations are done with full precision and different root nodes as well.
Malvika: At INSAID, students are encouraged to build high-quality Github profiles. Have you built a Github portfolio and how do you think this will help you?
Sudeep: Exposure in the industry is important. However, for a newbie, learning and exploring is of fundamental value. Github gives you the platform for just that. You can learn a lot from your peers as Github is an open-source platform.
Malvika: INSAID’s mission is to groom Data Leaders of tomorrow. Could you help me understand what Data Leaders are and how they’re different from Data Scientists?
Sudeep: A Data Leader includes many other roles over and above that of a Data Scientist. Going beyond solving a business problem, relaying your analysis to the leadership and understanding the context in which solutions are to be provided is the role of a Data Leader. A Data Leader is also expected to act on leadership opportunities and train teams.
Malvika: Thank You, Sudeep! This has been very informative. On behalf of our team at INSAID, we wish you Good Luck for the future!
