“Gaining broad technical skills in artificial intelligence and data science isn’t actually that challenging,” recognized Jaskirat Bhatia. “You can find countless tutorials on Youtube that will teach you the basics. But they can’t tell you which tools to apply to which problems. They can’t guide your learning in any way.” That’s where the Master of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (MDSAI) comes in.
Bhatia came across the MDSAI program at the perfect time. As an undergraduate student of computer science in India, he completed a project in a coding class that required him to use machine learning to predict restaurant sales. “Even though it was a simple linear regression, I saw the power and potential of machine learning,” he remembered. Motivated to learn more about the field of machine learning and artificial intelligence, Bhatia applied to the Master of Data Science program at Waterloo. He received an email offering admission to both the Master of Data Science and a brand-new program, the MDSAI. He didn’t have to think twice to commit to the MDSAI. “I couldn’t believe it. No other university was offering a program like this.”
Entering the MDSAI with minimal work experience, Bhatia found enormous value in his co-op term. In the Department of Chemistry, Professor Subha Kalyaanamoorthy had undertaken an ambitious research project to create a model for repurposing an existing drug to treat COVID-19, and she needed someone with exceptional data science and machine learning skills.
Bhatia used machine learning to identify tens of thousands of properties that identify which types of molecules will bind to which types of proteins. “If you can identify a molecule that binds to the main protein of COVID-19, you can effectively disable the virus,” he explained. Kalyaanamoorthy is preparing to publish a research paper that incorporates Bhatia’s research. “I was the only person on the project who was able to code and apply a machine learning lens to the problem,” he reflected. “I couldn’t have expected more from the experience.”
After completing his coursework at the end of 2020, Bhatia attended a virtual meetup to make industry connections. He displayed a project he had completed during his MDSAI experience that used machine learning to predict life satisfaction using 200 different measures. “Another participant approached me and complimented my work,” shared Bhatia. “One conversation led to another and now we’re business partners.” Bhatia and his co-founder recently created a company called JEmotions, which uses AI to measure stress levels and connect users to mental health resources.
“We’re still in the prototype stage, but I’m excited about our potential for growth in the next few years,” said Bhatia. “Thanks to the MDSAI program, I had all the knowledge I needed to take this chance.”
When I was 15-16 years old, an above-average student in high school with big dreams: wanted to become a "coder". Every 6 months there used to be an inter-school coding competition and every time, the school topper would be sent for it; something which I was not okay with. So I approached my teacher and asked her if I could go for it once; she said no you won't be able to make it. Disheartened Jaskirat came up with a brilliant idea - what if I beat the school topper in a local coding challenge; then I would be the one going for the competition! I approach the teacher with my brilliant idea and after a couple of rejections, she says okay, and guess what, I beat him! Now, for this one time, it's me who is going for that competition; unfortunately, I did not win but it inspired me, showed me what I am capable of and the fire of never giving up still runs in my blood.
Graduated from school, now what. I got into a great University, got carried away with how much fun university was; cheated my way through first year, said to myself, is this what I am now, a cheater? It took a lot of determination to get back on track and in the start of second year, I join a team called ASV(Autonomous Surface Vehicle) they were making a boat that would move, identify and dodge obstacles and dock autonomously. Soon after, I became the programming leader in that team but, due to politics in the university they shut down funding for every team in the university and we all were forced to leave the team. It sure hurt, but I moved on with my studies and in my third year I took a course on Python and discovered its endless capabilities. I was blown away! That is when Machine Learning got my attention and saw how powerful it could be, devoted my time to learn more about it and made my first ML project which was to predict the sales of a restaurant using Linear Regression (Fairly basic but a great starter project) and honestly, I had to copy the graph from the internet as mine didn't really work :p. Took my failure as a challenge and during my final year, I planned my major project to be the best project in the entire university. It consisted of 3 different parts (Each part was equivalently large enough to be a singular major project) Part 1: A block-chain that stored EHR's(Electronic Health Records) and each EHR was first digitally signed by the private-key of the doctor and then encrypted using the public-key of the user making it a fail-proof system with endless applications. Part 2: A predictive model where you could select over 300 different symptoms and based on those symptoms a probability was assigned to all diseases(total of over 4000 diseases) and the top 3 most probable diseases would be displayed. Part 3: A recommender system which would recommend you a doctor based on your disease, location, price range etc and would display the top doctors on a map. Successfully made my project and was selected to be in the top 3 projects in the entire university.
With great programming skills and a passion for Machine Learning / Data Science, I enrolled in the Master's in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Waterloo. Bolstered my existing skills and built on them; growing ever since! Everything was going great till Covid hit us all; no more in-person activities, everyone going into depression - a horrible life. Something had to be done about this! I saw an opportunity where a group of researchers were working to repurpose a drug for Covid-19, I took that chance without any hesitation and spearheaded the research to build from scratch - a predictive model which would predict if a molecule is a binder to a given protein or not. Used my model to test tens of thousands of drugs and came up with just over 200 drugs which could be the possible cure to Covid-19.
I have now successfully completed my master's degree but my story doesn't stop here! There is no stopping.
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C/ C++ ⭐⭐⭐⭐✩
Java ⭐⭐⭐✩✩
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Deep Learning Specialization (DeepLearning.AI) - Certificate
Neural Networks and Deep Learning - Certificate
Improving Deep Neural Networks: Hyperparameter Tuning, Regularization and Optimization - Certificate
Structuring Machine Learning Projects - Certificate
Convolution Neural Networks (CNN) - Certificate
Sequence Models (RNN) - Certificate
Python : IIT(Indian Institute Of Technology) Bombay - Certificate
R : John Hopkins University - Certificate
Machine Learning : Stanford University - Certificate
Astronomy Coding : Nehru Planetarium = Certificate
University Of Waterloo - Waterloo, Canada
Grade: 80.56%
Date: Sept 2019 - Dec 2020
Relevant Courses: Classification, Data Visualization, Exploratory Data Analysis, BigData, Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, Optimizations for Data Science, Causality in Machine Learning
SRM University - Chennai, India
Grade: 83.75%
Date: Jul 2015 - May 2019
Relevant Courses: Data Mining, Machine Learning, Data Structures and Algorithms, Object Oriented Paradigm, Database Management Systems