Prakhar Rathi

Prakhar Rathi

Data Scientist

American Express

About Me

I am a data scientist with a passion for creating innovative solutions to complex problems. I am a graduate from Shiv Nadar University, India. I majored in Computer Science Engineering with a minor in Economics.

Currently, I am working as a Data Scientist with the Global Optimization and Call Management (GOCM) team at American Express.

Previously, I was working as a research intern with the Inria-Modal Group to identify and isolate the causes of suicides in Nord-Pas de Calais region in France using statistical modelling and spatial econometrics. Last summer, I worked as a Data Science for Social Good fellow at the University of Warwick in collaboration with the German Federal Minsitry for Economic Affairs (BMWK). I also dabble in Machine Learning Engineering as an open-source collaborator at the AI4Bharat Lab at IIT-Madras.

When I am not in front of a computer screen, I enjoy hiking to remote lands and cycling. I am always open to a match of lawn tennis or badminton. You can often find me reading Jeffrey Archer or humming to The Lumineers. I love indie and rock music ♪. You can know me better from my music. In my last, Myers-Briggs personality test, I tested as an ENTJ.

Download my resumé .

Interests
  • Data Science
  • Computational Social Science
  • Natural Language Processing
  • Machine Learning
  • Data Engineering
Education
  • B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering, 2018-2022

    Shiv Nadar University

  • Summer Institute in Computational Social Science, 2022

    International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad

Skills

My technical skills and core competencies

skills/r-project-icon
R
skills/python-5
Python
Analytics
skills/djangoproject-icon
Django
skills/stata1
STATA
Natural Language Processing
SQL
skills/pytorch
PyTorch
skills/keras
Keras

Experience

 
 
 
 
 
American Express
Data Scientist
Aug 2022 – Present Gurugram, India
  • Part of the Global Optimisation and Call Management (GOCM) team which serves both inbound and outbound calls from our members in the JAPA, EMEA and Americas markets, along with managing the customer support centres globally.
  • Led the machine learning and forecasting efforts within the GOCM team to support the operations team in their real-time call volume handling.
  • Helped the Complaints segment to forecast their complaint volumes for the next quarter and developed a model to recommend a staffing strategy, which led to the creation of staffing plans for the EMEA, Americas and APAC regions for the next quarter.
 
 
 
 
 
AI4Bhārat Lab, IIT Madras
Machine Learning Engineer
Jun 2022 – Aug 2022 Chennai, India
  • AI4Bharat is a Research Center at IIT Madras focused on developing ML-based solutions for Indian communities. I was working as a contributor for the Shoonya Project and the Chitralekha Project.

  • Shoonya is a data labeling and annotation tool built to enhance digital presence of under-represented languages in India. Chitralekha is an open source platform tool for video subtitling across various Indic languages, using ML model support. Both the platforms are currently being used by 100+ annotators across India who are skilled translation experts.

  • Developed a React and Django based web portal to annotate and store the text translations from English to Indian languages and vice-versa.

  • Wrote efficient code for the logic of the APIs and Webhooks used by the platform for both internal and external software functionalities.

  • Implemented multiple async functionalities in the project using celery and Django to speed up the application.

 
 
 
 
 
American Express
Analyst Intern
Jan 2022 – Jun 2022 Gurugram, India
  • Part of the Global Optimisation and Call Management (GOCM) team which serves both inbound and outbound calls from our members in the JAPA, EMEA and Americas markets, along with managing the customer support centres globally.
  • Developed and deployed machine learning models to quantify the factors that affect the key metrics within the GOCM team. These models are able to forecast the metric outcomes with a mean average percentage error of 7%.
  • Standardized the machine learning modelling and deployment practices within the GOCM to provide a roadmap for similar projects in the future, through extensive documentation and curated tutorials.
 
 
 
 
 
Data Science for Social Good Fellow
Jun 2021 – Aug 2021 Coventry, United Kingdom
  • Worked with the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology on a project to strengthen their economic forecasts during times of shocks using machine learning Methods.
  • Built vector autoregression models to forecast quarterly unemployment rates at the county level in Germany.
  • Our novel method beat the existing forecasting methods and the popular time series models applied to this problem. The details of our solution can be found on the Github page.
 
 
 
 
 
Major League Hacking
MLH Fellow
Jul 2021 – Aug 2021 Remote
  • Selected for the MLH Pre-Fellowship in a team of 10 members.
  • Contributed to a portfolio template website using Ruby, Jekyll and JavaScript.
  • Worked in a subgroup of three members to build ‘GitDash’ - a GitHub dashboard to track all the things a person is working on, along with reminders and GitHub data aggregator.
  • Used Technologies like Next.Js, TypeScript and Github Rest API.
  • Won the prize for the “Best Pod Project”!
 
 
 
 
 
National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (INRIA)
Research Intern
Mar 2021 – Jun 2021 Lille, France
  • Worked with the highest ranked research institute in France on a problem of suicide analysis in Lille.
  • Used the socio-economic data collected from people who attempted suicide to predict whether they would attempt it again. It was also used to identify the factors which contribute to first time and repeated attempts.
  • Implemented the concepts of semi-parametric regression, statistical modelling and spatial econometrics using R.
  • Our work determined the probability of suicide attempts in the next 6 months with an AUC Score of 0.89. This work will be submitted to the local government in Lille and a paper will also be written.
 
 
 
 
 
Alan Turing Institute for Artificial Intelligence
Data Study Group Participant
Aug 2020 – Sep 2020 London, United Kingdom (Remote)
  • Completed the challenge - “Communicating High-Street Bakery Sales Predictions Using Counterfactual Explanations” presented by CatsAI
  • Collaborated with a team of 11 doctoral researchers globally to build predictive models with explainable AI approaches
  • Successfully analysed two years of bakery sales and weather data from 5000 sites to build predictive models and provided counterfactual explanations
 
 
 
 
 
Indian School of Business
Financial ML Intern
Jun 2020 – Aug 2020 Hyderabad, India
  • Worked on developing and automating financial trading strategies using seminal research papers. Implemented the strategies, like Piotroski F Score and Momentum Trading Strategy, and backtested them for over 15 years' data with positive returns.

  • I conducted various test to ascertain the results which included downside risk measures like Value at Risk, CVaR, Semideviation, Sharpe and Sortino Ratios. I also developed pipelines which automated the process of investing and testing on past data using Python.

  • Developed and deployed a machine learning tool for the Union Bank of India which allotted risk scores to customers based on past customer data. The bank used the model to decide which customers would receive a loan. My risk allocation model brought down the customer default rate by 11% on 2 years of testing data.

  • Assisted ongoing research in the field of financial machine learning to help write a paper which was accepted in The Financial Review.

 
 
 
 
 
Omdena
Junior ML Engineer
Jun 2020 – Jul 2020 Remote (Part-Time)
  • Worked on a project by the Botnar Foundation to capture and understand what young people (age 10-24 yrs) today think about topics like their future, aspirations, concerns, and challenges they face, etc.

  • Collaborated with a team of 50 Machine Learning engineers to develop tools to analyze and understand the sentiments and aspirations of young people and performed a temporal analysis to understand how the sentiments have been changing over time, especially due to the Covid-19 Pandemic.

  • I was also the task manager of the Reddit team which worked on Crowdsourcing data from the popular social media website. My team collected and processed over 30000 posts along with comments in three languages.

  • The project host, Fondation Botnar, is a Swiss-based foundation that champions the use of digital and AI to improve the health and wellbeing of children and young people globally. They used our work to create counselling services and mental well-being indicators for young people in the European Union.

Achievements

  • Won the ‘Mindfire Quest’ organized by Swiss Re and recieved CHF 23000 cash prize. (2021)
  • Represented Team India at the Global Finals of the KPMG Ideation Challenge (KIC) 2021 after being selected from among 12000 teams. At the global finals, we were selected amongst the Top-4 teams. (2021)
  • Dean’s List for Academic Excellence given to the Top 5% CGPA holders in the department. (5 semesters)
  • Finalist, Smart India Hackathon. Worked on a project for Cisco Devnet using Meraki Camera and it’s APIs. (2020)
  • Intel AI Edge Scholarship Recipient (2020)
  • Facebook Spark AR Scholar (2020)
  • AI Crowd Blitz Hackathon - Rank 7/400 (2020)
  • National Science Olympiad - State Rank 1 (2015)
  • Junior Science Talent Search Examination - Rank 26/70000 (2014)

Recent Posts

I like to write about data science, machine learning and finance. I document personal experiences and projects. I write for organizations like Towards Data Science, The Startup, Level up Coding and Analytics Vidhya. My main goal is to break down technical content for non-technical audiences.

Creating a multi-page Dash Application

Creating a multi-page Dash Application

Building and deploying a multipage Python webapp in a few simple steps.

7 Must-Read Books for Data Scientists in 2022

7 Must-Read Books for Data Scientists in 2022

Technical and Non-Technical books that will help you a become better data scientist.

Creating Dynamic Length Forms in Django

Creating Dynamic Length Forms in Django

Discussing a fix to create a Django form which can have a dynamic number of input fields.

5 New features in Python 3.11 that makes it the coolest new release in 2022

5 New features in Python 3.11 that makes it the coolest new release in 2022

Discussing the new features and updates in Python 3.11 and how to install the 3.11 Alpha version.

Data Science for Social Good Summer Fellowship

Data Science for Social Good Summer Fellowship

A summer fellowship for people looking to make a positive change in society through data science

Automated Text Analysis using Streamlit

Automated Text Analysis using Streamlit

Efficient and Quick Text Analysis Tool built using Streamlit including Text Summarization, POS Tagging and Named Entity Recognition.

Creating Multipage applications using Streamlit (efficiently!)

Creating Multipage applications using Streamlit (efficiently!)

Building your first Multipage Streamlit application and deploying it. The prerequisite is knowing the basics of Python and Streamlit.

Downside Risk Measures — Python Implementation

Downside Risk Measures — Python Implementation

Implementing Semideviation, VaR and CVaR risk estimation strategies in Python. Downside risk is when the returns go lower than the buy price and how to estimate them.

Asset Risk Management Strategy — Maximum Drawdowns

Asset Risk Management Strategy — Maximum Drawdowns

One of the key factors involved in asset and portfolio management is accurately assessing the risk involved in your investment. Implementing a stock market risk analysis strategy in Python.

A Novel Approach to Feature Importance — Shapley Additive Explanations

A Novel Approach to Feature Importance — Shapley Additive Explanations

Machine learning interpretability is a topic of growing importance in this field. Discussin an aspect of machine learning interpretability — feature importance and a novel approach called Shapley Additives.

Predicting Reddit Flairs using Machine Learning and Deploying the Model using Heroku — Part 2

Predicting Reddit Flairs using Machine Learning and Deploying the Model using Heroku — Part 2

An end-to-end machine learning project series. Text Analysis and Model Building.

Predicting Reddit Flairs using Machine Learning and Deploying the Model using Heroku — Part 1

Predicting Reddit Flairs using Machine Learning and Deploying the Model using Heroku — Part 1

An end-to-end machine learning project series. Problem Definition and Data Collection from Reddit.

Poker Hand Prediction

Poker Hand Prediction

An iterative approach to predicting which hand will win the match. An unconventional solution to a conventional problem.

Recent Publications

Quickly discover relevant content by filtering publications.
(2021). Communicating high-street bakery sales predictions using counterfactual explanations.. In Zenodo, Alan Turing Institute.

Cite DOI Paper

(2021). Novel mixed-encoding for forecasting patent grant duration.. In WPI.

Cite DOI Paper

Community Building

The actvities I engage in to promote learning and skill development within my peers.

 
 
 
 
 
Developer Student Clubs (DSC), Shiv Nadar University
DSC Lead
Aug 2020 – Jul 2021 Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh
  • Head of Developer Student Club, Shiv Nadar University which is the official community of Google Developers on campus with over 350 community members.
  • Leading a team of 30 student volunteers who work on university-wide projects which have a deep impact on stakeholders on and around our campus.
  • We also take monthly sessions on new and upcoming Google technologies like Google Cloud, Tensorflow, Firebase etc. The details about our work are available on our social media pages
  • Ceftificate of completion for my tenure can be accessed here.
 
 
 
 
 
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), SNU
Vice Chairperson
Jan 2020 – Dec 2020 Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh
  • Vice-Chair of the official chapter of ACM in SNU. Started and led a special interest group for Machine Learning under ACM, SNU Chapter to promote peer learning and targeted skill development among students.
  • Closely mentored 5 undergraduate students to learn ML and apply it to research projects within their field of interest. Made unique curriculum, discussed project ideas and organized mentor sessions for each student in the group.
  • Organized the biggest hackathon - HackData in SNU with over 150 participants over a period of three days.
 
 
 
 
 
Founder, Vice President
Jan 2020 – Mar 2021 Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh
  • Founded a research society, SNU.ai, at Shiv Nadar University to promote AI Research across different disciplines.
  • Mentored over 100 undergrads to learn ML and apply it to research projects within their field of interest.
  • Organized talks and webinars with various AI researchers from different parts of the world.
 
 
 
 
 
President
Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh
  • Elected the president of the college debating society where we debate in the Asian and British Parliamentary Style format.
  • A-level adjudicator and semi-finalist at the Amity University Tournament.

Courses and Certifications

AI for Trading Nanodegree
  • I completed Udacity’s 6-month long nanodegree program. In this program, I analyzed real data and built financial models for trading. The program was divided into two parts.

Part 1: Quantitative Trading Part 2: AI Algorithms in Trading

See certificate
Coursera
Neural Networks and Deep Learning
See certificate
Coursera
Advanced Trading Algorithms
Developed by Indian School of Business
See certificate
Introduction to Trading, Machine Learning & GCP by Google Cloud & New York Institute of Finance
See certificate

Contact