At ZS India, Shankar leads the AI group. The group focuses on solving complex problems for clients across industries including healthcare. The team leverages diverse data, latest ML algorithms, and high-end AI platforms to work across the spectrum of innovation (AI research) to industrialization (AI products). He partners with global life science companies to enhance their customer effectiveness using data-driven approaches — improving access to novel treatments, optimizing the core patient experience, improving medication adherence, and realizing better health outcomes.
Shankar is passionate about ZS’ goal – improving health outcomes for all. He strongly believes AI has a critical role in realizing this goal. Making AI work, however, requires a confluence of factors – focusing on the right problems, agile innovation, scaling solutions, and enabling adoption. A thriving talent ecosystem is critical for all of this. In his role, Shankar spends significant energy to foster ZS’ AI talent and is proud of the high-performance culture in the team.

Shankar has an interdisciplinary Ph.D. from Purdue University (AI and OR applied to complex process systems control) and a B.Tech from IIT Madras. He was recognized as a top 10 Data Scientist in India by the Analytics India Magazine in 2017.