People / Alumni / Class of 2023
Ishu Kalra graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology - Guwahati in 2020 with a bachelor's in biotechnology. During his bachelor's, Ishu worked with cBioPortal for Cancer Genomics as a Google Summer of Code - 2017 student to improve genome view in patient view page using igv.js. During the summer of 2017, Ishu worked with Computational Biology and Translational Bioinformatics Laboratory - IIT Roorkee under Professor Deepak Sharma on the Dhadkan 2 project. There, Ishu used image processing to digitize the paper ECG scans and made an ensemble machine learning model to predict cardiac arrhythmia with 99% accuracy when used on MCI and MIT-BIH datasets. Ishu's project was also shortlisted for the rd Commonwealth Digital Health Awards 208 held in Sri Lanka. The following year, Ishu did a summer research internship at Yale University, where he worked under Dr. Mark Gerstein in single-cell RNA sequencing. His goal was to analyze the datasets to elucidate mouse organogenesis using single-cell technology. Ishu's bachelor's thesis was under Dr. Ajai B. Kunnumakkara on analyzing tumor heterogeneity using single-cell RNA sequencing, where he investigated the datasets of breast cancer cells. A part of his work was published in a research paper in the journal International Journal of Molecular Sciences 202. Ishu was the head of team microbiology at the Nucleus Project, where Ishu contributed to designing a three-unit nanosatellite to test the space environment's effect on microfaunae such as tardigrades and rotifers. After graduation, Ishu joined Wells Fargo as a Risk Analytics Consultant. His project involves the migration of machine learning models from SAS to Python. These ML models belong to the commercial, decision support, and unsecured portfolio. In ensuring the migration, Ishu learned about the end-to-end process where he matches the results of SAS with Python to provide a 100% match, from the schema of the data frame to the value in the cell with some tolerance for floating-point errors. Ishu has used Apache Spark and Hive for these ML models and wrote various utilities to work with Hadoop Distributed File System. He supported the migration of T2A by owning the reporting modules, led efforts to migrate the scoring and tie-out process, worked on the balance snapshot data preparation, WIM LOB allocation of balances across new/existing customers across portfolios, flooring adjustment of balances for Secured Prime Line portfolio and led unit-testing efforts for T2A and WIM SBL balance model. Ishu set up a Hive monitoring automation framework within the post-processing modules that can be leveraged across consumer decision support models. Besides the above, Ishu also orchestrated two RMG-wide pieces of training on Github and Python and led the weekly PyFARM nuggets mailers to acquaint the RMG about Data Science and its topics like Apache Spark, Hadoop, Hortonworks, Git and Github, NAS and HDFS, data lake and data warehouse, and SAS to Python Equivalency. Through the MSiA* program, Ishu aims to expand his skillset further into the realm of analytics. He is thrilled to leverage his analytical skills and build a more solid understanding of data science. Outside of academic and professional pursuits, Ishu enjoys music, tea, and spending time with family and friends.
*later renamed MS in Machine Learning and Data Science
