Sourav Karmakar is a data scientist from Kolkata with experience at Intuit and Amazon. He started out as an electrical engineer and moved into data science through a postgraduate degree at the Indian Statistical Institute, where he finished first in his batch.
Education and qualifications
Sourav holds a B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from Jadavpur University, where his coursework covered circuit design, control systems and signal processing. He later completed an M.Tech in Computer Science at the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), securing the 1st rank in his batch.
The switch to computer science was not a small one. Coming from an electrical background, he had to build his programming, statistics and machine learning knowledge from the ground up during the programme.
Why he moved to data science
While working on electrical systems, Sourav's job involved algorithms for power systems and automation. That exposure showed him how much industries were relying on data science and AI to improve their processes, and it is what pushed him to make the change formally through the ISI degree.
Work experience
His first data science role was at Intuit as a Data Scientist. His work there covered financial forecasting models, fraud detection algorithms and customer behaviour analysis, and his solutions improved model performance and automation, for which he received multiple internal accolades.
He then joined Amazon as a Senior Data Scientist, working on scalable AI solutions, customer segmentation models and recommendation systems used by millions of customers worldwide. His work drew on machine learning, AI and optimisation techniques.
Interests
Sourav keeps up with new machine learning techniques and AI research, including reinforcement learning, deep learning and NLP, and continues to update his skills in these areas.
Approach to work
Sourav's own career is a working example of a non-CS engineer moving into data science, which is the transition many of his students are attempting. He brings both the academic side, from ISI, and the applied side, from Intuit and Amazon, to his mentoring.
