In weekly our column ‘A Day In The Life Of’, we are trying to step into the shoes of the awesome techies from various organisations who are working in emerging tech areas like big data, data analytics, artificial intelligence and the internet of things, among others.
This week, Analytics India Magazine decided to talk to Nikhil Narayan S, Data Scientist, mfine, about his life as a data scientist and his passion for numbers, trains and photography.
Narayan, who is interested in Manga, Anime and aviation, says that inspiration for his work strikes him at any time as he loves technical problems. He says happily, “On an ordinary day, my office hours are between 11.30 am and 7.30 pm. On days when I have an epiphany or if I wish to try out a new technology or an algorithm, I tend to work late into the night until I am satisfied and typically end the day at about 4.30 am or 5:00 am. But I don’t consider that as office hours personally, it’s just that I love solving technical problems so much that I tend to forget the time goes by.”
When asked about what his work primarily consists of, Narayan says that as the lead Data Scientist he is in charge of:
- Design and development of AI architecture and pipelines
- R&D of AI algorithms
- Patents and Publications
- Handling clinical collaborations
- Handling collaborations with industry and academia
- Developing proofs-of-concept and productising algorithms
He adds, “I plan my week in such a way that I spend roughly equal amounts of time for each activity every day. Of all the activities, I love planning and strategically executing each one of the above with pinpoint precision the best. I sleep well when things get done on time with a good quality outcome.”
Reiterating the importance of upskilling and taking an interest in a varied number of things, Narayan says, “I am an avid railways fan, aviation fan and to some extent a photographer as well. I keep track of updates in the aviation world at least once a week and go out on photography or railfanning tours when time permits. I love Japanese Manga and Anime. I have learnt German in the past and I have recently enrolled for online Korean classes.”
Saying that he has been happy with the current work-life balance found at mfine, Narayan adds that working in a startup, his hands are currently full with multiple projects as of now. “At this point in time, I am involved in projects that are targeted at building vision, hearing and thinking capabilities of our artificial intelligence platform,” he says.
When asked about his short term goals with respect to his career, Narayan, says, “I have identified the following as some of my short-term goals for the next couple of years:
- Specialise in development of cloud architectures
- Aim to get a six sigma green belt certification
- Specialise in NLP as well in the next 1-2 years time
- Manage and lead a multi-disciplinary team
- Publish my research work in some top-tier conferences or journals and file as many patents as possible.”
He, however, adds that he has more to offer to the company right now. “I have specialised in Signal Processing and Medical Imaging and I feel that I can contribute at multiple levels in building the capabilities for the AI platform that mfine intends to build,” he says.
