Ashish Mahabal

Ashish Mahabal is the deputy director at the center for data driven discovery, Caltech, USA, where he has been for over 25 years. He has been the chair of the astoinformatics and astrostatistics commission of the IAU, currently leads ML for the Zwicky Transient Facility - an astronomical survey, and the ML for Roman Space Telescope's RAPID team. In recent years he has extended his ML/AI expertise to medical data, and other areas like microorganisms. On a personal research level he is interested in variable astronomical objects, classification of all kinds, and in outreach (he recently led the development of ZARTH a game like Pokemon GO, but for astronomy). He also writes popular articles on astronomy and society, and is a published science fiction author in English and Marathi.