Poornima Ramesh
Associate Director, Data Science Engineering and Monitoring Systems, IDinsight Kenya
PhD Student, Machine Learning in Science (Jakob Macke), Tübingen AI Center
What is your connection to Tübingen, Poornima?
I was a PhD student with Prof. Dr. Jakob Macke from 2018 to 2022. I worked on applying statistical methods and GANs to neural data and simulation-based inference.
Is there a memory from your time here that had a lasting positive impact on you?
I remember my fellow PhD student in the lab (Dr. Auguste Schulz — current CEO of KI macht Schule) once asking me what impact my research would have on the world. I didn’t have an articulate answer then, but the rest of my time in Jakob’s lab and beyond has been an endeavor to find a compelling answer to that question.
I work on predictive models and generative AI tools to help non-profits, governments and funding organizations achieve impact within the development sector.
Poornima Ramesh
Where has your career taken you since, and did your time in Tübingen play a role? If so, how?
Since leaving Tübingen, I have worked at IDinsight on predictive models and generative AI tools to help non-profits, governments and funding organizations achieve impact within the development sector. This includes a range of problems from poverty mapping and predictive models for targeting government interventions, to developing GenAI tools for efficient experimentation and last mile health care delivery. Being able to work on all of these problems, I believe, is a direct result of the training and exposure to different labs / methods that I received at Machine Learning for Science (MLS) and Tübingen.