Saving lives through technology — Akash Kumar Nain

A data-lover and avid Kaggler now exploring how Machine Learning and Self-Driving Cars can save humans

It’s incredible how technology can change our everyday lives and impact humans so much. Some of the new technologies like Machine Learning and Deep Learning are playing a major role in detecting rare diseases like cancer, medical history, image analysis in radiology and pathology, and much more!

I am a Data Scientist with my expertise in the field of Machine Learning and Deep Learning. I am a Machine Learning Nanodegree as well as Self-Driving Car Nanodegree graduate from Udacity.

After my graduation, I had some offers from many big firms. I didn’t want to join any of them because I didn’t want to do what everyone else was doing. There was no course on Artificial Intelligence or Machine Learning in my university, but I knew that these were the real game changers. So, I started learning these things online. I started Machine Learning courses from other platforms. Then after completing it, I came across a free course on Deep Learning from Udacity. But, when I started doing Kaggle in August 2016, I realized that there is a lot of things that I am missing in applied Machine Learning. I thought to give a shot to Machine Learning Nanodegree as it covered a lot of aspects I wasn’t even aware of, for e.g., Reinforcement learning. I liked the content and the way in which it was taught. It was the first time I paid for an online course, but it was damn good in every aspect.
I opted for Machine Learning in Sep 2016, binge-studied, and finished it in Oct 2016.

Technology-wise, I am biased towards Machine Learning, and have much interest in that. Things made me interested in Self-Driving Car and its role in saving lives was a personal incident where I lost one of my very close friends. I believe autonomous vehicles could be the great public-health achievement of the 21st century. Driver-less Cars are poised to save millions of lives in future.

When Self-Driving Car Nanodegree was announced, I knew that it was a lot of money for an online course. But my past experience with Nanodegree was so good that I knew that it would be good no matter what. Also, some of my fellow Kagglers also opted for the same. To be very honest, I was going to opt out in the first week, but then I realized that this could be my chance to stand out from the crowd even without having MS or Ph.D. Also, as one of my friends suggested: “Look for the future. You will be years ahead of others by the time they get into this thing. ” I don’t think I could have made a better decision. Every aspect of Nanodegree was worth doing it.

There are a number of reasons why Udacity is much better than other platforms but some of the things that really make Udacity stand out of the crowd are:
1) Top notch content developed by tech giants: Yes, you heard it right. The content is developed by some of the big names in the industry. For example, term 2 in SDCND was developed by Mercedes-Benz while term 3 was developed by Nvidia. These are the things that engineers in these companies use for research and production. You don’t get this kind of content anywhere else.

2) Highly talented instructors: Not only the content is developed by tech giants, even the instructors are the highly talented engineers working in these companies. For example, during SDCND, term 1 was taught by Sr. engineers, and team lead at Uber whereas, term 2 was taught by the robotics team at Mercedes-Benz and term3 was taught by leading researchers at Nvidia.

3) Real-world projects: During my SDCND, we did Behavioral cloning, Vehicle detection and tracking in real time, path planning, semantic segmentation of road. All these projects are a part of a real self-driving car. Each of these is done at scale by self-driving car companies.

4) Hiring Partners: Udacity not only trains you for a particular field but it also helps you in getting a job in that field. There are dozens of hiring partners associated with each Nanodegree.

No other platform provides such things. And trust me, I have checked almost all good platforms for e-learning but, none compares to the standards of Udacity.

I think it’s the learning curve that matters the most. After doing the Nanodegrees, I found that my skills have leveled up a lot as compared to the people I was working with. I learned so many things in the field of robotics as well as Machine Learning or Deep Learning, while doing the Nanodegrees. In short, Nanodegrees has helped in polishing my skills. If you are currently enrolled into a Nanodegre, My advise would be “Don’t give up. Commitment and focus, that’s all you need while pursuing the Nanodegrees. Things can be overwhelming at times. Trust me, it is going to be worth it in the end. You don’t get such opportunities every day. Learn as much as you can. This is the time and this is the platform.”

Through the skills that I have acquired, I want to contribute to the society as much as I can. I want to apply my knowledge the fields of healthcare, self-driving cars, flying cars, drones, etc. These are the things that actually matter, create an impact, and would save millions of lives every year.