This month's Brains Behind Our Brand is Rucha Khopkar, Senior ML Research Scientist on our Research team. Rucha spends her days figuring out why models win, why they lose, and what to build next because of it. Get to know her below.

• Pronouns: She/her
• Role: Senior ML Research Scientist
• Team: Research
• How long you’ve been at Cognitiv: 2 years 3 months

Inside The Office

What does a typical day in your role really look like?

My typical day is basically a talent show debrief. A batch of models has just performed, and my job is to figure out who nailed it, who flopped, and, most importantly, why. Was it the features? The architecture? The data playing tricks? Every answer becomes a  learning, and every learning becomes the blueprint for the next generation of models. I only start building again once the last round has spilled all its secrets.

What’s the part of your job you love most (that might surprise people)?‍

The failed experiments. A model that wins teaches you one thing; a model that loses in a weird way teaches you five. Some of our best modeling ideas started with me staring at a strange evaluation plot, muttering "that shouldn't be possible", and then finding out why.

If your career had a tagline, what would it be?

"Trust the metrics. Then interrogate them." Half of my job is believing the numbers enough to act on them; the other half is treating every great result like it's hiding something. The best result I ever get is the one I try hardest to disprove, because if it survives my suspicion, it'll survive anything.

What advice would you give someone joining #TeamCognitiv?

Get ready to see your work come alive. Here, an idea becomes an experiment, an experiment becomes a model, and a model goes out into the world and starts moving real numbers, sometimes within weeks. That feedback loop is the best part of the job: fast, honest, and a little addictive. Every experiment feels like it matters, because it does.

‍Outside The Office

‍If you could have any superpower for a day, what would it be?

‍Freezing time, so I could be completely in the moment, for as long as the moment deserves. The best parts of a day always go by the fastest; I'd finally make them last.

What’s your go-to comfort food or guilty pleasure snack?

Dark chocolate and Hi-Chews! 

‍What hobby or skill would you love to pick up if time weren’t an issue?

Pottery! A lump of clay becoming something one-of-a-kind is my kind of magic. The goal: chai in a wobbly mug that exists nowhere else in the world.

If you could take a year off to do anything, what would you do?‍

Read and hike, a year spent working through my ever-growing book pile and chasing mountain trails: half the time above the clouds, half the time lost in a story.

‍Rapid-Fire Fun

• Sweet or savory? Sweet! 
• Early bird or night owl? Early bird
• Favorite childhood TV show or movie? Tom & Jerry; it's still my go-to whenever my brain needs a vacation
• Last song you listened to? Charlie Puth's new album Whatever's Clever! Still on repeat.
• Beach, mountains, or city for a vacation? Mountains

Team Shoutouts‍

“From building new models for one of our biggest accounts to improving our shared ML libraries in ways the whole team benefits from, Rucha brings rigor and care to everything she does. Beyond the work itself, she's the kind of teammate everyone hopes for, endlessly curious, quick to dig into a hard problem, and just as quick to share what she learns along the way. Every conversation with her leaves me with something new to think about, and I'm genuinely lucky to get to work with her.” — Yihan Chen, Senior Research Scientist