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<em><h3>Growing Up:  </h3></em>I was born and raised in Kolkata, the cultural capital of India (Also home to 3 of the 5 Nobel laureates (Citizens) India has produced, or 4 of the 9 Indian (Origin) Nobel Laureates also home to the most amazing sweets.

<em><h3>Academia:  </h3></em>I have spent the most unforgettable four years of my undergraduate studies at Jadavpur University - where I was taught how to become a better human being and was exposed to different aspects of life. Research-wise, I worked on Signal Processing, Control Systems, Nonlinear Dynamical Systems during my undergraduate days. I was advised by <a href="https://scholar.google.co.in/citations?user=z1BR7IgAAAAJ&amp;hl=en">Prof. Amitava Gupta</a> and <a href="https://scholar.google.co.in/citations?hl=en&amp;user=idxP_tAAAAAJ&amp;view_op=list_works">Prof. Ratna Ghosh</a>. I collaborated very closely with <a href="https://scholar.google.co.in/citations?user=AnvxAbkAAAAJ&amp;hl=en">Dr. Saptarshi Das</a> , <a href="https://scholar.google.co.in/citations?user=7ew4nvsAAAAJ&amp;hl=en">Dr. Indranil Pan</a> and <a href="https://scholar.google.co.in/citations?user=9ix9YS8AAAAJ&amp;hl=en">Shantanu Das</a>, Scientist H+,<a href="http://www.barc.gov.in/">BARC</a>. Together we have authored several research papers during my undergraduate. I proposed a new generalized version of arbitrary order (fractional derivative) <a href="https://scholar.google.co.in/scholar?oi=bibs&amp;hl=en&amp;cluster=1853048485089672463">Butterworth filter</a> during my UG research (and still gives me immense pleasure).

In 2013 I moved to the US and joined Univ. of California Irvine for MS studies.I was advised by <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=bEcLezcAAAAJ&amp;hl=en">Prof. Animashree Anandkumar</a> and later I worked with and authored paper with <a href="https://scholar.google.co.in/citations?user=yLQF4mkAAAAJ&amp;hl=en">Prof. Charless Fowlkes</a>. During my MS I was a visiting research scholar at TTIC, hosted by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_A._McAllester">Prof. David McAllester</a>, also worked as an intern at Toyota Research in North America (TRINA) where we were developing stereo algorithms to make driverless cars work. I also interned at this wonderful start-up <a href="https://www.fem-inc.com/">FEM inc</a>, which is now sold to <a href="https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/">AC Nielsen</a>.

<em><h3>Building Alexa :  </h3></em>Post my MS, I joined Amazon Alexa AI in June 2016 after briefly working as a data scientist at <a href="https://www.slb.com/">Schlumberger</a> and <a href="https://www.ebay.com/">eBay Customer Insights and Analytics</a> in 2015.  I worked as an Applied Scientist at <a href="https://www.amazon.jobs/en/teams/alexa-ai">Amazon Alexa AI</a> for 3 years until June 2019. At Amazon, I was involved from the very beginning of the conception of Alexa and got to work proposing, designing and implementing various NLP problems extensively [I have built and launched NER, Intent Classifiers, Domain Classifiers of the mainstream Alexa models]. The most exciting part of my journey @Amazon was to learn how to build big NLP systems -wiring up different NLP components together in a production setting. While the last 1 or so years as a senior scientist I have focused mostly on multi-turn dialog agents especially I was focused on building dialog simulators and also leading that effort along with a couple of junior scientists and SDEs [Here is what we <a href="https://youtu.be/hEIjCF-KaRY" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://youtu.be/hEIjCF-KaRY&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1574323194855000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHYOhmrK8wjd3PjaD96X9Qk35KOXQ">launched</a> and here is <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sanjupancholi_dinner-and-a-movie-amazon-alexa-makes-it-activity-6542091722191699969-BwK9" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sanjupancholi_dinner-and-a-movie-amazon-alexa-makes-it-activity-6542091722191699969-BwK9&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1574323194855000&amp;usg=AFQjCNH3jcJVkIf8XTGbW--mQRQABUYTLA">my mention</a> on LinkedIn re: launch]. My work @Amazon has produced a paper and two patents. Here are some articles about my work @Amazon. <a href="https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/alexa/post/a7bb4a16-c86b-4019-b3f9-b0d663b87d30/new-method-for-compressing-neural-networks-better-preserves-accuracy" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/alexa/post/a7bb4a16-c86b-4019-b3f9-b0d663b87d30/new-method-for-compressing-neural-networks-better-preserves-accuracy&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1574323194855000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGTGC_zYDR3mGo61wtGE1MBD11oAA">Amazon Alexa Science Blog</a>, <a href="https://www.google.com/amp/s/hub.packtpub.com/amazon-alexa-ai-researchers-develop-new-method-to-compress-neural-networks-and-preserves-accuracy-of-system/amp/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.google.com/amp/s/hub.packtpub.com/amazon-alexa-ai-researchers-develop-new-method-to-compress-neural-networks-and-preserves-accuracy-of-system/amp/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1574323194855000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFg2DFMXXtDmbKYBIRJAAMfycZxTw">Packt Blog Post</a>.

<em><h3>Back in Academia:  </h3></em>Currently I am doing a PhD (July, 2019 - Present) at <a href="https://www.utexas.edu/">The University of Texas at Austin</a> being advised by <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=xBv5ZfkAAAAJ&amp;hl=en">Prof. Inderjit S. Dhillon</a> and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=O-DazBUAAAAJ&amp;hl=en">Prof. Sujay Sanghavi</a>. I am member of <a href="https://wncg.org">WNCG</a> and <a href="https://www.oden.utexas.edu/">ODEN Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences</a>