About Me — Purvanshi
Human | Data Scientist | Writer | Just trying to balance cheese on my pizza
Isn’t writing about yourself difficult and easy at the same time? You only have to research yourself enough to be writing this but that is years of work and difficult in itself. But here I am trying to pen down some aspects of my life and beliefs.
I was never a fond of 160 character long Medium bio in any case. Bio’s are like looking at an unknown person on a street and exchanging a wave. About me’s are like have a coffee or dinner with a stranger. It’s about the story behind the person. The small things which made them who they are today.
Home
I was born in what I believe is one of the most beautiful cities in India- Udaipur aka city of lakes.
Running by the lake side and exercising on the hills was a part of my everyday. Every Sunday my father took us to a nearby hike early morning. We used to eat the poha for breakfast that day and Daal Bati for lunch! I formed a strong connection with nature and food.
My childhood was all about trying new things. My mother put me and my sister into various activities early on. We tried everything from Bollywood dancing, calligraphy, abacus, vedic maths, all sorts of painting (oil, water, sketching), knitting, cooking, French language class, chess classes Blah Blah….
I wouldn’t say I liked or associated with them all. But the important lesson I learnt from these is the concept of ‘free time’. She taught us to associate free time with trying/ learning something new. I think its relatively easier for me to get into new hobbies than other people and I like trying even if I suck at those. I have an activity I try every Saturday. These days I am learning Italian and I write here sometimes:)
Badminton
When I was 10 years old my mom took me to a table tennis (TT)coaching center. I loved sports. I found sports very calculated and systematic. The rules are defined and there is a clear winner.
No subjective opinion about it.
I liked TT but that was not something which required a lot of leg work. Luckily the center also had a Badminton court! I stopped going to the TT court and started with Badminton. I was initially the only girl of my age there. I loved it. Stepping on the court, smashes, warming up became a part of my life and my sister soon joined me. The picture is of her. Since we always played side by side it also strengthened our relationship.
Our day began with 5 am runs on the ground, followed by conditioning exercises and then school. Evenings were again spent on the court.
I learnt the importance of commitment and patience in seeing your results.
As any other sport, it took a long time to see my results but Badminton has been one of the most rewarding things in my life.
I still remember tournaments- the competition, the cheering and the loosing. It was not just a sport. It’s a feeling.
I have seen inequality for women in sports with such proximity that you would always find me encouraging everyone to play something professionally once in their lives and trust me its never too late to start. (I started learning Lawn Tennis but due to Pandemic the courts shut down. I might start again or some other sport). Playing professionally brings a serious sense of improvement and commitment. I ended playing nationals :) and winning the state championship multiple times.
Technology
I love working and learning. One thing to mention here is I love working on meaningful things. I am a very emotional worker. This doesn't mean I throw tantrums while working or my work depends on my mood; but I need to believe in what I am doing in order to give my best work out. And getting to do work I believe in everyday is difficult. But I have been lucky enough to find a close proximity.
Before joining my undergrad I did not even know what software engineering was or I wanted to do in life. The later, I am still trying to figure out.
But I strongly believe technology can change lives and if working in the right domain it can change lives positively.
Oh the things I love about technology! I remember how introduction of Uber helped me travel late night in Delhi alone. I could send my tracking to someone and they could check if I am safe. Obviously there were still chances of something bad happening but I felt a sense of security with everything being monitored. I love how social media has democratized small businesses. One of my friend’s in Udaipur is now selling her handcrafts all over the world. I love how AI has automated mundane tasks. The possibilities are endless. The emotions I felt when I first rode a Tesla cant even put into words!
I am so excited just to see what a world with quantum computers, flying cars and super intelligent systems would look like. I also think about the harmful impacts these are already causing in our society and what we as people working in tech can do about it. But the rant about how we are not doing enough is for another blog post.
Education and Career
The first predictive modelling class I took was magical for me.
It felt like predicting the future which I now believe was completely naïve.
I always thought about educational disparity amongst private and government schools in India. The quality of resources and teachers varies a lot. Hence I started working on my first project ISolveMath. I wanted to build a platform which would answer all mathematical questions in English language. I also dreamed of expanding to Multiple Indian language starting form Hindi. (Ambitious right?).
I had taken only one ML course till that time and I didnt even know what I was getting into. I applied to the IIIT lab in India which specializes in NLP and there was one student who was working on similar problems. I spent the summer there and realized the area has not even been properly explored in research. We were the first people to propose a Deep Learning based solution to the simplest language math problems. Problems like-
Alice has 2 apples, Bob gave her 2 more. How many apples does Alice has?
could be solved. I made an API for the system and connected it to a telegram bot.
I pitched the idea in front of various investor (I got to connect with them through some great friends) and they gave me very productive feedback.
I realized how difficult it is to actually build something as opposed to just bring accuracy in your lab.
I was not able to build IsolveMath to its full potential but I learned a lot- from designing a pitching to starting up with Machine Learning and also writing a paper in an international conference. (I also got to go to Taiwan for presenting my work).
I kept on exploring more deep learning ideas and techniques. It was interesting with new things happening everyday. To be honest no other field has brought me this level of excitement to be honest. I decided to do a research thesis instead of an industry one which was common at our university as people wanted jobs after graduation. I applied at various places and was accepted to 3 places. I chose to go to a lab in Germany.
Europe was different. I loved the work ethic of people. Working small hours but with great efficiency. If I am receiving an email on Saturday or Sunday or after 5PM, it must be an emergency! I also got the chance to get involved with an external lab MindGarage, where anyone would walk in and work. I loved the idea of such open knowledge sharing. When the professor there moved to Sweden, I also got to visit his lab for almost a month.
I could write a whole book about my time in Europe. But that’s for some other time. I still miss the good cheese and bread. I travelled 2 times to Italy and it has my heart.
Italy became a part of me.
It was not just the place but the people! The food! Here is a picture from my galary from Cala Luna, Sardinia. If life gives you a chance go visit it you will realize how beautiful everything is.
The obvious option after working in a research lab was Graduate school. I had the option of staying in Europe where I knew the group and had a professor who was ready to fund my Master’s. And then I had the option of the US. This was a difficult choice. I knew US offered more options in the tech industry therefore I moved here for my Master’s.
MS and beyond
Before moving to the US I went to Canada for about 20 days for the reinforcement learning Summer School. In my Master’s took a lot of Neuroscience courses. I was always interested to know more about how the brain works. This is one of the reasons I love ML!
Within the 2nd week of my computational neuroscience class I realized the intricate differences of how different are the aims of Neuroscience as opposed to Artificial Intelligence were. While building models we never consider if it is biological plausible. And Neuroscientists dont think about test accuracies. I liked the idea of reverse engineering the brain more. As understanding itself is SO COMPLICATED.
I chose to keep my field as ‘AI’ as opposed to ‘Computational Neuroscience’. I might someday like to work at the intersection of these two if given a chance but for now I want to understand Artificial Neural Nets more.
Writing and work
I am currently working as a Data Scientist at Microsoft in their security research team. I love to write. It’s like clearing my own thoughts about the field. These are the things I write about-
- My own work- Writing what you have done in the form of a blog post helps to bring in a wider audience. I have written about- Multimodal Learning, Math word problem Solving
2. How did I get into Data Science / ML Eng and Research- I like to share what I have learnt throughout my ‘ML journey’. Interview resources
3. Things I learn- I recently wrote about ‘How to not write crappy ML code series’. I also wrote about Graph Neural Networks in NLP and Model privacy.
4. Thoughts- Sometimes I write about non technical stuff. These are usually the questions in my mind I need answers to or some life event.
P.S.
As I am continuously growing I will keep updating my ‘About me’. Connect with me on LinkedIn or shoot me an email on purvanshi.mehta11@gmail.com if we have common interests! Thanks for reading along :)
