Hi there. 👋
My name is Atul Acharya; I’m a maker and builder of things, and I love learning.
This site exists primarily to document my own learning adventures over the years.
Contact
Feel free to contact me on Twitter: @AtulAcharya
About Me
One word that describes me: Curious. Two more: Lifelong learner. If you know me, I’m always on a quest to do or learn something new.
My view of AI is that artificial intelligence is an augmentation tool for humans. As such, I am completely fascinated by applied AI, and deep learning. I like and understand the theories; however, I am more enamored by practical use cases of deep learning.
I keep a broad interest in applied AI, and here are a few domains I track.
Applied AI Use Cases
- Healthcare: Medical diagnostics (radiology, skin cancer detection, diabetic retinopathy, etc.)
- Robotics: Self driving cars, Autonomous mobile robots, Flying cars
- AI on the Edge Deep learning applications on smartphones, Raspberry Pi, and other edge-compute devices
- Aerial: Aerial image (satellite image analytics), drone photography/analytics
- Creative AI: creative arts (e.g. neural style transfer), creative music generation tools for artists and amateurs
- Natural Language Understanding: Neural machine translation, language understanding
Things I’m Learning and Building (a constantly updated list)
Deep Learning - I completed several specializations: Deep Learning (Andrew Ng’s new 5-course), Machine Learning Specialization (from Univ. of Washington), Artificial Intelligence Nanodegree from Udacity, and some more. See here for my reviews.
Autonomous Systems - Self Driving Cars, Robotics. I completed Udacity’s Self-Driving Car Nanodegree in 2017. I’m learning how to teach robots.
Mobile Apps - I build iOS apps and mobile experiences.
Reinforcement Learning - Learning and teaching robots.
My brief philosophy
My (very brief) view of humanity is that what separates us from other animals is our ability to learn - from our experiences, from others, and from everything around us. Our ability to expand our potential, and to apply it to daily life. That’s what drives me.
Work
I work on products by day, hack on deep learning projects by night, and learn continously.
A lot of my work and interests are inter-disciplinary. As such, my interests span the big picture – strategy, vision, product, growth, customers – and the details – product management, design, analytics, UX. I switch between the two easily, as do I between technology and business.
Some areas of my work are:
- Product Management: product + portfolio strategy, product concept to launch, planning/forecasting, [customer] value proposition development, roadmapping, go-to-market strategy
- Leadership: leading cross-functional teams: product, engineering, design, marketing
- Engineering: product development (software and hardware), system architecture
- Analytics: business analytics, data science
Primary areas that interest me:
- Mobile: mobile apps/services - Messaging, Ads/Analytics, Mobile Commerce/Payments
- Mobile devices: Smartphones, Tablets, Connected Devices (Wearables, Set-Top Boxes, IOT)
- Autonomous Systems: Self-Driving Cars, Robotics
- Retail Tech: Ecommerce, Analytics
Disclosure
[All opinions are mine, not of any employer’s or organization’s, past, present or future. These opinions will evolve as I learn more.]