Summary
Prerna Chikersal is a Machine Learning Scientist II based in Pittsburgh with 12 years of experience bridging academic research and product-focused ML at organizations including Carnegie Mellon, Microsoft Research, Snap, and Tripadvisor. She holds advanced degrees in Robotics, HCI, and a PhD in Machine Learning & HCI from CMU, and has translated multimodal sensing, speech, vision, and wearable data into predictive health and collaboration insights used in clinical and consumer settings. Her work spans end-to-end systems: building mobile data-collection apps, real-time monitoring dashboards, novel ML models (from GBMs to multimodal SVMs and causal analyses), and running user studies that informed design and clinical collaboration. Notably, her research uncovered counterintuitive findings about the role of visual cues in remote teamwork that attracted major media attention, demonstrating an ability to combine rigorous experiments with high-impact narratives. She excels at turning complex behavioral and physiological signals into actionable models and product features that improve health outcomes and communication.
12 years of coding experience
2 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Engineering (B.Eng.), Computer Science, Bachelor of Engineering (B.Eng.), Computer Science at Nanyang Technological University
Undergraduate Visiting Student, Computer Science, Undergraduate Visiting Student, Computer Science at Columbia University in the City of New York
High School, High school, Gold Medalist with A1 in all subjects, High School, High school, Gold Medalist with A1 in all subjects at Delhi Public School - R. K. Puram
Master of Science (M.S.), Robotics, Master of Science (M.S.), Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University
English, Hindi, French, Punjabi, Urdu