I’m currently the Engineering Manager, Machine Learning (NLP) at BenchSci, a company which builds AI-powered platform called ASCEND for preclinical research in drug discovery. BenchSci caters to most large pharmaceutical companies, which happen to be our customers. At BenchSci, I lead a multi-disciplinary team named Text Enrichment team which is focused on developing NLP technologies for the ASCEND, including using Large Language Models (based off of GPT and BERT). Before that, I was the Director of Engineering (Machine Learning) at Xtract AI (known as Innovation Projects group within Patriot One Technologies). There I led and oversaw the development of Xtract AI’s product portfolio, consisting of three AI-enabled products in the space of video processing and natural language processing. Before this, I worked for over half a decade as a technical hands on engineer in data science as well as a researcher in various companies/institutes. I completed my Masters degree in Computing Science, and was a Research Assistant in Machine Learning and Medical Imaging at the Medical Image Analysis Laboratory (MIAL) under Prof. Ghassan Hamarneh at Simon Fraser University. I received a full scholarship to pursue my masters degree at SFU along with a special entrance scholarship. I later became an NSERC-CREATE Bioinformatics Fellow for the year 2018-2019 under the joint Bioinformatics Program between UBC-SFU.

My main interests lie in machine learning and deep learning, specifically for application towards medical imaging [1], [2], [3], computer vision [4], and natural language processing [5], [6]. I have hands on experience with a variety of different projects in both industry and academia, where I developed computer vision systems for autonomous cars [7], computer aided detection systems for mammography [3], [8] and brain MRI [9], handwritten signature verification system [10], and applied reinforcement learning algorithms to computer animation [11]. During my masters, I also worked as Machine Learning Researcher at the Division of Neurosurgery at Vancouver General Hospital. Apart from that, I was working part-time as a Consulting Software Engineer for Pluto Health Innovations to develop smart electronic health records (EHR) system for clinics by leveraging advances in natural language processing. Being an NSERC-CREATE Bioinformatics Fellow, I performed and presented thorough literature surveys in core bioinformatics [12], [13], as well as on the application of natural language processing methods in bioinformatics [14]. I have written short summaries for a number of seminal papers in medical image analysis, which are available here.

Before joining SFU for my masters, I worked as a Machine Learning Engineer at RadSupport Inc. alongside Stanford/Caltech alumni. I did my undergrad at DAV Institute of Engineering and Technology in Jalandhar, and received the INAE Mentoring of Engineering Students Fellowship to pursue undergraduate dissertation under Prof. Sushmita Mitra and Dr. B. Uma Shankar at ISI Kolkata.

I wouldn’t be where I am without the support of some of the amazing mentors I’ve had in my life. I have had the privilege to be mentored by Dr. Jayasree Chakraborty and Dr. Abhishek Midya (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center) from early in my undergrad. I was mentored by Prof. Ghassan Hamarneh in performing ethical, high quality research that makes an impact in the world. Lately, I’ve been learning the art of business, sales, finance, executive leadership and relationship building through my mentor Dr. Cornell Pich. I’ve been helped tremendously by the advice from Dr. Justin Granek who helped me pave the path for my success at Xtract AI.

Personal Interests

I’m passionate about racing (Formula 1, GT3, and IMSA Racing. I am an avid SimRacer, which is a form of realistic simulation racing on Assetto Corsa Competizione and iRacing. I’m big into culinary exploration - especially trying out vegetarian cuisines and developing my palette. I keep myself busy with some mechanical watch collection and their general admiration. I’m big into fitness (hiking, strength training, conditioning) and sports (volleyball).