Lochan finds it exciting to come up with all the answers and build a story for data

Can you share the most interesting part of your professional journey?

I could have never guessed which aspect of my professional journey would emerge as the most interesting part until recently. I completed my bachelor’s in 2013 and worked for more than a year. Later, I left my job to pursue my master's degree.

Now, here comes the interesting part. After earning for more than a year, I was a student again, living and surviving in Pune with a mentality reflecting these thoughts: “I have enough savings, and I should not be bothering my family for money since now I am not earning.” Initially, I was enjoying college life, new friends, studies, etc., without the tension of filling timesheets, sprint calls, client presentations, and other similar things. But slowly, I felt my friends who had joined the first organisation with me were earning (earning more, I must say), and their life was completely different. They were going to fancy restaurants and events and undertaking trips without bothering about expenses and studying for exams. I consider those two years as a period when I developed so much calm and patience I never had. I made myself understand that it was what I wanted. I wanted a master’s degree and a better job. If not pursued around then, it could be a little difficult to achieve later, and it was, after all, going to help me in future. I also cut down on my travel and dining expenses. But that does not mean I didn’t enjoy it; I enjoyed it to the fullest being a student. After that, I got a job in campus placement, and soon, things were back to normal again.

What excites you the most about working with data and AI

The answer would be “questions.” There may be an end to data, but not the questions that we get and have on certain data. This curiosity makes AI more interesting, pushing me to explore more. Unlike other technologies and streams, this is completely different. A lot of discoveries and explorations are going on daily. The more you learn, the more you understand that even this is not enough; the ocean is still unexplored. When I go through blogs, articles, and papers, I sometimes wonder what is next. Another exciting thing is when you come up with all the answers to those questions and build a story for that data. I mean being a Data Scientist also means being a “storyteller.” A storyteller who herself/himself does not know what the next finding will be, what the ending will be, and so on. Joining all the bits and pieces of the analysis and putting them together as chapters of the story—that’s what we do. Mind you, this story is not always pleasant. Sometimes, you will be proud of yourself, and sometimes you might feel disappointed. But that should not define our boundaries. Let’s keep the excitement alive and keep the questions coming.

Describe an interesting project that you have worked on.

I was working with my previous employer on an astronomical project just after my master’s. The project was with the government of India and eight other countries. I used to keep learning new things, and hence came across “Machine Learning (ML).” I started talking to scientists and was very keen to apply for astronomy under ML. I kept studying and understanding two new things: astronomy and machine learning. Trust me, I found ML much easier. I had to sit with people who had strong domain knowledge in astronomy and then figure out how the data would be used. Since it was all telescope data, everything was in terms of coordinates, and some fields were not even in a human-readable format. It took a lot to make sense of it, convert it into numbers, and make it worthy of my model. Finally, I implemented an ML model to detect pulsars and presented it to the Director and others in the senior management. It was a moment of pride for me as I had done it, being the only data scientist surrounded by real scientists.This small self-initiated project pushed me towards data science, and today, I am working as a Data Scientist in one of the top companies. Could that be more interesting?