HELLO! I’M DHANASHREE BALARAM


ABOUT ME
My Background
The last 6 years have shaped my professional life and strategically placed me at the brink of cutting edge ML technology. Whether it is understanding complex research, tweaking existing ML models or building my own unique solutions, I believe that the user is at the center. My research has always consisted of guard rails within which I find numerous fun challenges. There's nothing more satisfying than a novel research idea that works in the real world! Stay tuned!

EXPERIENCE
Work History
January 2022 - Present
LILY AI
SENIOR MACHINE LEARNING SCIENTIST
July 2021 - January 2022
ZEFR INC.
SENIOR DEEP LEARNING SCIENTIST, COMPUTER VISION
August 2018 - July 2021
ADOBE INC.
APPLIED ML RESEARCH SCIENTIST
EVENTS AND CONFERENCES
Dec 2018
NEURIPS
Participated in the Women in Machine Learning Workshop as a Mentor and held a mentorship circle to discuss the challenges faced by an ML Scientist in the industry
Dec 2022
NEURIPS WIML
Accepted poster at WiML 2022 workshop. I will be presenting my work at the poster session in-person this year.

ACADEMICS
Learning and Living
Jan 2017 - May 2018
M.S. ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING
CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY
During my 3 semesters at CMU, I took courses ranging from Neural Signal Processing to Advanced Multimodal Machine Learning. A unique course I took, called Nuclear Robotics (level: 800 at the Robotics Institute) really challenged me to think outside the box and delve into complex concepts like ROS, RVIZ and LIDAR mapping - concept that I hadn't come across before. Along with the above mentioned courses, I took Intro to ML (601) and some PhD level core courses like Topics in Deep Learning (701) and Computer Vision (720)
August 2012 - June 2016
B.E. ELECTRONICS AND COMMS ENGINEERING
During my B.E, I enjoyed understanding core concepts in hardware that help me perform my job duties better today. In addition to core ECE subjects, I was introduced to courses like 'Signals and Systems' and 'Information Theory'. These subjects changed the way I perceived math. Soon after, I opted for electives such as Image and Speech processing, Artificial Neural Networks and Random Process. These courses were compelling enough for me to want to study more..

FEATURES

5 QUESTIONS WITH DHANASHREE BALARAM, APPLIED MACHINE LEARNING RESEARCH SCIENTIST
“Two years ago I wanted to be the CEO of a giant company,” she laughs when I ask her what she hopes to accomplish in her role as an Applied Machine Learning Research Scientist, “but after this first year at Adobe, I realize I really want to hone my skills. I want to visualize the different solutions to a problem and narrow down on the best one...

WOMEN IN TECH SPEAKER
During her #WTGC2022 talk, Dhanashree Balaram will delve into some common concepts behind recommender systems, particularly the positive and negative impact of tracking user behavior

MY SKILLS
Tricks of the Trade
DEEP LEARNING, MACHINE LEARNING, COMPUTER VISION
PYTHON, PYTORCH, TENSORFLOW, C++
WORKING WITH UNBALANCED DATASETS, LARGE DATASETS, REAL WORLD DATA
ONLINE LEARNING, BANDITS UPPER CONFIDENCE BOUND, RECOMMENDER SYSTEMS, INTELLIGENT SEARCH
DESIGNING MACHINE LEARNING SYSTEMS, CALIBRATING ML MODELS

"Believe you can and you're halfway there"
Theodore Roosevelt
