TeamTalk - Meet Prabu Dheenathayalan, VP of Engineering - Machine Learning

Prabu has accumulated a wealth of experiences and knowledge within the travel industry, it is fair to say he is well-travelled and ready to take on improving the travel industry. 

Prabu has always been interested in creative and innovative solutions, working on unique projects in his past. He has gained a proficiency in image processing and machine vision through his previous role working with autonomous driving technology. He led projects to harness data from cars and imagery from satellites to gather valuable insights and construct and update comprehensive maps that guide cars that are autonomously driven. 

Prabu says, “I’ve been exposed to big data, almost a decade ago I started working with satellite data, I know how to extract meaningful insights from huge volumes of data, that is my expertise.”

He was introduced to image processing and supervised learning whilst working within the space industry at the German Space Agency and during his PhD at Delft University of Technology. 

When he heard that he could be doing similar work using baggage biometrics and computer vision for the travel industry, he thought it would be perfect to put his knowledge to the task of automating the baggage journey.

Working at BagsID as VP of Engineering - Machine Learning - has been exciting for Prabu, after six months of working on the team, he feels like there has been a lot of his expertise and background put to work, whilst also working towards a milestone of improving the baggage tracking process across multiple airports and airlines.

He explains in more detail why he feels the work that BagsID is doing is so important. “For BagsID, in case of contribution models and what we develop, we will form the base of a lot of new applications within the baggage industry” he adds, “the profiling of bags will help the baggage industry alongside the aviation industry.”

When it comes to projects and results, Prabu works very hard to ensure that all pipelines in terms of machine learning are built and, most importantly, iterated on. He strongly advocates for running continuous experimentation and staying attuned to state-of-art research advancements.

He says, "we are establishing a baseline system and now refining every component to perfection. It is fascinating to uncover the impact of the changes made on previous iterations, and anticipating the future impact of the current changes while we run experiments continuously in the cloud.”

In terms of all technology, Prabu agrees with Tsveti that AI is going to see an expansion and evolution across all areas. “AI has yet to be fully utilised in full-scale automation. However, it is gradually making its way to production in different fields, and I believe that within a decade or so, it would even surpass human capabilities in most domains. In the future, we can’t avoid AI and we need to regulate and accommodate AI better, just as we did with the inventions of electricity and other machines in the past.”

Within BagsID, Prabu is excited about the growth that is to come. He is on an instrumental team that helps build and innovate baggage scanning and tracking technology. He updates us on the progress: “Our trajectory is set for continuous growth in AI performance with no intention of turning back. We are dedicated to improving our tech stack and building compelling products.”

Making progress towards goals and leading projects to success is what excites Prabu and motivates him to get out of bed and take on the day. Another source of immense joy comes from his family, especially his son, whose daily adventures Prabu eagerly looks forward to hearing about.

We are excited to have Prabu on our team, and hope that he gets to take an exotic holiday soon. His chosen destination? Antarctica!