In an era where data is the new oil, organizations are relentlessly striving to harness its power to drive customer-centric transformations. Rohan Singh Rajput, an experienced data scientist and the Personalization Domain Lead at Headspace, has been at the forefront of leveraging machine learning and AI to enhance user experiences through personalized recommendations and predictive insights. His journey, marked by innovative solutions and a keen focus on customer engagement, offers a deep dive into the necessity and impact of customer-centric transformations within organizations.
Rohan’s journey at Headspace, a platform dedicated to improving the mental health of its users, began with a mission to enhance user engagement and support long-term habit formation through personalized content. His work in deploying machine learning models, particularly in the personalization domain, has improved engagement by 5% and laid the foundation for an end-to-end production-grade recommendation system. The models, driven by latent factors, have enabled the platform to understand user behaviors and preferences on a deeper level, thereby enhancing the user experience through tailored content and interactions.
Latent factors, the hidden variables derived from mathematical models, have been pivotal in Rohan’s work across various organizations, including Ticketmaster and Headspace. At Ticketmaster, Rohan developed a Machine Learning Interpretability and model monitoring system using latent factors of a Matrix Factorization model, which was instrumental in extracting and understanding the underlying patterns in user-item interactions. This not only improved the recommendation system but also provided valuable insights into customer preferences and behaviors. The transformation was not just in the technology but also in the way organizations could now make data-driven decisions to enhance customer experiences.
A/B testing has been a crucial element in Rohan’s strategy to ensure the effectiveness of the deployed models. At Headspace, he established the A/B testing framework within the machine learning team, fostering an experiment-driven culture across the company. This approach allowed the team to validate the impact of the personalized recommendation system, ensuring that the models were not only theoretically sound but also practically impactful in enhancing user engagement and satisfaction.
Rohan’s work has also permeated the healthcare sector, where he collaborated with pharmacies and hospitals to predict patient risk scores and factors using EHR and census data. His transition from rule-based models to ensemble machine learning predictive models, such as regression and XGBoost, improved patient adherence by 21%, reducing costs for healthcare insurance providers. This not only exemplifies the transformative power of AI in healthcare but also underscores the potential of predictive modeling in enabling organizations to make more informed, data-driven decisions.
With a robust presence on professional platforms and contributions to conferences and publications, Rohan has been a thought leader in the data science community. His insights and expertise have been shared through various mediums, including speaking engagements at conferences like ACM RecSys 2023 and AIMLR 2023, and writing articles for industry-specific newsletters. His influence extends to his role as a reviewer and committee member for several esteemed conferences, ensuring the propagation of quality knowledge and innovations within the data science community.
Rohan Singh Rajput’s journey through the realms of data science, machine learning, and AI underscores the transformative potential of customer-centric transformations within organizations. His work, deeply embedded in latent factor-driven AI, has not only enhanced personalization and user engagement across platforms but has also paved the way for organizations to leverage data in making more informed, impactful decisions. As organizations continue to navigate the data-driven landscape, the insights and innovations brought forth by leaders like Rohan will undoubtedly play a pivotal role in shaping the future of customer-centric transformations.
