Santanu Bhattacharya
Born
Northeast India
CitizenshipAmerican
Alma materIIT Bombay
MIT Sloan
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
University of Maryland
Occupation(s)Scientist at Camera Culture Group MIT Media Lab
Visiting professor at Indian Institute of Science

Santanu Bhattacharya is an American data scientist. He is a scientist at the Camera Culture Group, MIT Media Lab.[1] and a visiting professor at Indian Institute of Science.[2] He is a serial entrepreneur and has worked for NASA and Facebook in the past.[3]

Early life

Santanu was born in the remote sub-Himalayan part of Northeast India.[4] After graduating high-school, he studied at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay before moving to the United States for graduate school.[5]

Career

Santanu received his PhD from University of Maryland, College Park and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center where he published several papers on a new class of superconducting infrared detectors.[6][7]

Following the academic experience, Santanu pursued an entrepreneurial path in data and automation at OriginLab. Santanu then led LIMS product development at Beckman Instruments and AT Kearney to pursue management consulting with several marquee clients such as Gillette, Pepsi, BMW and Goldman Sachs.[8][9]

In 2004 he joined AOL-Time Warner, then a leading internet company where the B2C internet users spend most time every day. Santanu led the creation of the Analytics Solution Centre, a global team of over 200 data scientists, online advertising experts and engineers who build foundational technologies around AOL’s contextual and behavioural advertising targeting platforms.[10][11]

In 2008, Santanu started Salorix, a Silicon Valley based startup, to build an AI platform to help global brands find the social media updates that are worth responding to, a "needle in a haystack" problem.[12] Salorix’s flagship product Amplfy enabled global brands to monetize social media campaigns by analyzing real-time social conversations and ranking the most effective engaging audience.[13]

In 2014, he joined Facebook where he led Emerging Market Products functions that used data-driven technology to build new products for emerging user growth.[14]

From 2015-2017, Santanu served as Senior Vice President, Technology and Products at Delhivery India’s largest third-party eCommerce logistics that went IPO in 2022.[15][16][17][18] In 2018, he was appointed as the Chief Data Scientist of Airtel, world’s second largest telco with 450 million subscribers in 18 countries.[19][20][21][22]

"India Class" Data Problems

At the 2020 World Economic Forum in Davos, Santanu talked about his philosophy of solving "India Class" data problems that serve as a template for the rest of the world.[23] According to his talks and writings on the topic, "India Class" problems are defined as being at the crossroad of exploding amount of private data (unstructured, incomplete, incorrect), nascent consumer behaviour with "switchers" who exchange or try out others phones, apps, expectations for software or services being free and relatively limited amount of public data on addresses, population, migration, income etc.[1][24]

COVID-19 and Data Science

The rapid growth of COVID-19 led to an unprecedented response globally. Santanu was appointed as a member of the COVID-19 Mobility Data Network at Harvard University to "provide daily updates to decision-makers at the state and local levels on how well social distancing interventions are working." The team consisted of infectious disease epidemiologists and scientists working in partnership with tech companies to use aggregated mobility data in support of the COVID-19 response.[25]

References

  1. ^ a b "Economic Impact of Discoverability of Localities and Addresses in India". Emerging Worlds. Retrieved 2 January 2021.
  2. ^ "Visiting Professors – Robert Bosch Centre for Cyber-Physical Systems @ IISc Bangalore". Retrieved 19 October 2020.
  3. ^ "Airtel hires former Facebook & Delhivery exec Santanu Bhattacharya as chief data scientist". The Economic Times. Retrieved 17 October 2020.
  4. ^ Fok, Evelyn. "Delhivery will eventually be a data company with significant business in logistics: Santanu Bhattacharya". The Economic Times. Retrieved 2 January 2021.
  5. ^ "Airtel eyes AI and Machine Learning: Appoints Santanu Bhattacharya as Chief Data Scientist". Tech Observer. 5 April 2018. Retrieved 2 January 2021.
  6. ^ "Santanu Bhattacharya Google Scholar". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 21 October 2020.
  7. ^ Bhattacharya, Santanu (1994). Low Frequency Optical Response in High-Temperature Superconductors (Thesis). Bibcode:1994PhDT.......203B.
  8. ^ SiliconIndia. "Salorix raises $3.5 million in series A round of Funding". siliconindia. Retrieved 2 January 2021.
  9. ^ "VC-backed social media marketing and analytics startup Salorix shuts up shop". VCCircle. 4 March 2014. Retrieved 2 January 2021.
  10. ^ "Santanu Bhattacharya's schedule for NPC 2017". npc2017.sched.com. Retrieved 2 January 2021.
  11. ^ Ribeiro, John (2 April 2004). "AOL sets up software center in India". InfoWorld. Retrieved 25 October 2020.
  12. ^ "Social Media Marketing Startup Salorix Lands $3.5M Series A". TechCrunch. 14 November 2011. Retrieved 17 October 2020.
  13. ^ "Salorix Launches Amplfy 2.0 To Help Brands Find The Most Relevant Social Media Conversations". TechCrunch. 14 December 2012. Retrieved 17 October 2020.
  14. ^ Marshall, Jack (2 July 2014). "Facebook's New Ad Effort Focuses on Emerging Markets". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 17 October 2020.
  15. ^ Fok, Evelyn. "Delhivery hires Facebook's Santanu Bhattacharya as data sciences head". The Economic Times. Retrieved 17 October 2020.
  16. ^ Bureau, Indiaretailing (24 August 2015). "Delhivery prepares for festive season rush with data analytics, AI". Indiaretailing.com. Retrieved 17 October 2020.
  17. ^ "En Inde, le cauchemar du dernier kilomètre". Le Monde.fr (in French). 7 October 2016. Retrieved 17 October 2020.
  18. ^ "delhivery ipo: Latest News & Videos, Photos about delhivery ipo | The Economic Times - Page 1". The Economic Times. Retrieved 27 June 2022.
  19. ^ IANS (5 April 2018). "Airtel appoints Santanu Bhattacharya as its Chief Data Scientist". Business Standard India. Retrieved 21 October 2020.
  20. ^ "Airtel Appoints Santanu Bhattacharya as Chief Data Scientist". News18. 5 April 2018. Retrieved 21 October 2020.
  21. ^ Hebbar, Prajakta (5 April 2018). "Former NASA Executive Santanu Bhattacharya To Join Bharti Airtel As Chief Data Scientist". Analytics India Magazine. Retrieved 21 October 2020.
  22. ^ "Airtel appoints ex-NASA exec Santanu Bhattacharya to lead digital-innovation lab". in.news.yahoo.com. Retrieved 4 December 2020.
  23. ^ "Transformative Tech in the Emerging World | Santanu Bhattacharya | Davos 2020". YouTube.
  24. ^ Bhattacharya, Dr Santanu (13 October 2020). "Powering the World with "India Class" Technologies". Medium. Retrieved 16 November 2020.
  25. ^ "Announcing the COVID-19 Mobility Data Network • The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute". The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute. 26 March 2020. Retrieved 16 January 2021.
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