14-01-2021 : Sudeep Das (Netflix)

Personalisation at Netflix: Making Stories Travel

At Netflix, we believe that great stories can come from anywhere in the world. We leverage deep human expertise together with machine learning techniques to enable a highly personalized experience for our members, that also encourages discovery and helps connect them with stories from the edges of the world. My talk will be a high level overview of the ML landscape that makes this magical experience happen.

Sudeep Das is a Senior Researcher in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence at Netflix, with expertise in natural language processing, recommender systems, and information retrieval. His main work lies at the heart of applied machine learning algorithms that power highly personalized experiences within consumer facing products. He is especially passionate about applications of deep neural networks and causal inference in the space of recommendations and search. He has about a decade of experience in applied research in personalization, from building music recommendation systems at Beats Music (later Apple Music), to leading the restaurant recommendation efforts at OpenTable Inc. (Priceline). Currently, at Netflix, he leads several projects in the algorithmic innovation space that constantly aim to improve the personalized experience of hundreds of millions of Netflix members across the globe. Sudeep holds a PhD in Astrophysics from Princeton University, where he led a research project that made possible the first detection of an elusive Astrophysical effect. Sudeep is extremely passionate about education and outreach, and has acted as a mentor and lecturer at machine learning workshops for the young students in the US (UC Berkeley) and in Mauritius, Rwanda and South Africa.