Varsha is standing in front of a whiteboard and scribbling math notes for data analysis.

ZEISS Stories | Varsha

Mastering the art of
data science

Digital Innovations

Logical technology or artistic dancing? Varsha was challenged with this question early on in life. Varsha, who was born in India, was challenged with this question early on in life. She devoted her free time to two passions that could not be more different: The Indian classical dance Bharatnatyam and learning how to code. Today, Varsha is successful in both disciplines and knows that art and technology do not have to be mutually exclusive. While she performs with her dance group on European stages at the weekends, she develops machine learning solutions in her professional life at ZEISS Digital Partners in Munich. As a Data Scientist, she enables systems to recognize correlations and learn from collected empirical values, all based on data.

Varsha is sitting and smiling at her desk in a bright, spacious, glass-walled office.

Analyzing, processing, deriving

The basic tool for her job is Python, a common coding language in data science. However, not for Varsha, who was only taught C++ and Java at school. The programmer was introduced to Python for the first time during her Master's degree program. "A different syntax, the same logic," says Varsha, who is eagerly practicing her new discipline through training and coding challenges. And it pays off: She gained a foothold in the AI Accelerator team at ZEISS, where she learnt about the world of data science, which forms the basis of machine learning. After all, before a system can learn independently from data, the amount of data must be pre-processed. This is where a kind of number riddle begins, as Varsha explains: "When we receive new raw data, the focus is on the question: What can we derive from the data? We look for logical connections, trends and correlations in data. It's like a big Sudoku puzzle!" Once insights have been derived from the patterns, new knowledge is created for the company.

Data science is an area in which the possibilities are almost limitless. I gain valuable experience with every project, while the next one is already waiting for me. It's very fulfilling.

Varsha Data Scientist

Behind the zeros and ones

But that's not all: some systems are already able to generate data themselves and use them as the decision-making base for predictions. This means that the computer learns from its experience and improves itself - without any human help. Like the voice assistant on one's smartphone, for example. Machine learning is part of the field of artificial intelligence (AI) that enables companies to perform very complex and extensive analyses. A good example of this is her thesis proof of concept project focused on diagnosing diabetic retinopathy through federated learning. In this project, she aimed to develop a machine learning model that learns from diverse data sources while keeping the data on the client devices - demonstrating the feasibility & performance of federated training compared to the centralized training approach. The aim of this project was to effectively support the diagnosis of the eye disease.

For Varsha, data science and machine learning go hand in hand. And that is also what fascinates her about her job: "Data science is an area in which the possibilities are almost limitless. I gain valuable experience with every project, while the next one is already waiting for me. It's very fulfilling."

The project work helps her to gain important insights into the many different dimensions of data science. Varsha wants to continue learning and, in the mid-term, find a niche in which she can utilize her strength, the art of programming, as precisely as possible. Just like dancing in her free time. A perfect symbiosis, she thinks.