Published on 25, May 2023

Vijayasarathi Balasubramanian and His Contribution to the AI Zeitgeist

The history of machine learning (ML) is much longer than most might realize. While ML models  like ChatGPT are hot topics of discussion nowadays, artificial intelligence and its subset machine learning were exciting touchstones of groundbreaking research over 70 years ago. They were once a fixation of forward-thinking science fiction media, but now they’ve grown into dynamic tools which are being used across a spectrum of industries.

Though it has advanced well past its neural network foundation created back in 1943, the technology overall is still in its infancy stages. Usability and applications are always the biggest hurdles of any history-changing discovery, but data scientists and researchers are constantly pushing the envelope to shape the tech. One such data scientist is Vijayasarathi Balasubramanian, also known as “Vijay”. He’s been using his decades’ long experience to help large corporations use machine learning at scale.

Back in 2006, when distributed computing was still a topic of discussion, Vijay was one of the forerunners implementing this technology to organize and create insights from multi-terabyte unstructured data for British Telecom, the largest Telecom provider in the UK, operating in 180+ countries. These British Telecom assignments piqued his interest for data science, and so Vijay enrolled for Masters in Data Science at the University of Notre Dame. The algorithms and techniques he learned in Notre Dame helped him create enterprise scale data products and apply advanced machine learning to solve real world problems.

After moving to the United States, his career continued to advance, and he refined his craft in the retail and telecom domains. He developed expertise in developing advanced data science solutions in multi cloud environments, developing state-of-the-art machine learning models, and deriving key insights of large allocated data sets. Such key insights include breaking down customer information into demographic, geographic location, and product or service popularity. He uses these insights to hone various ML technology, such as the ones behind product recommendation algorithms.

“I’m excited about the future of AI and its application to real world problems, especially with the recent advancements in processing power, the realization of complex algorithms, and the creation of models such as ChatGPT,” says Vijay. He also cautions the usage, adding, “I believe that artificial intelligence is only as good as the companies and individuals who use it. Companies can really benefit from its intentional utility. Once properly implemented, consumers will appreciate smoother sales processes and might even be excited about buying things in the future.”

Vijay’s hard work has accumulated in 17 years of experience, and he has since joined the ranks of Microsoft where he currently works as a Senior Data and Applied Scientist. He also actively mentors AI/ML startup founders and data science professionals. Vijay labels himself as an ardent reader and is an enthusiastic contributor to the scholastic community. To spread his knowledge in the data science space and to inspire budding scientists in this field, he actively writes blogs on LinkedIn. He is also contributing to technical communities including IEEE, IET, and BCS.

“I’m looking forward to the future, both in regards to data science and my own. I feel like I’m still getting started, and I have big plans for what I want to do next. For now, though, I’m very happy doing what I’m doing right now.”

Vijayasarathi Balasubramanian has seventeen years of professional experience , where he specialized in the telecom and e-commerce fields. Currently, he works at a leading cloud solution provider as a Senior Data and Applied Scientist to enable data science as a service in the cloud environment.

To learn about Vijay or to learn more about his thoughts on data science, connect with him on LinkedIn.