During the month of March, our team celebrates the achievements of inspiring women and their contribution to the world of science and technology. For our employee spotlight series, we spoke with Rashmi Bomiriya, PhD, the Managing Director (Asia Holdings) and Chief Data Scientist at RS Metrics, about the reasons why she joined our team and her views on the future of data science. If you want to learn more about the leadership team behind RS Metrics, visit our official website…
How did you end up working for RS Metrics?
When I returned to Sri Lanka after completing the PhD program at Penn State, my goal was to start a Stat Consulting firm at which time I happened to learn about RS Metrics from a friend. With a little bit of research online, it appeared that the work the company was doing is very unique and interesting, hence I reached out to them. After a quick round of successful interviews (Colombo, Sri Lanka and USA) and given the peaceful working environment, the pleasant conversations I had with the founders and the feeling that I’d be able to contribute greatly to the company while learning a lot myself, I was tempted to join RS Metrics and hence accepted the job offer.
What is the most exciting thing about your job?
There are many things that keep me constantly excited about my job. Let me break it down to a few key factors.
The Variety, Veracity & Profound Nature of What We Do at RS Metrics — RS Metrics is a company that provides a wide range of services and products while still falling in the single category of providing geospatial intelligence services. It ranges from providing retail business insights via monitoring parking lot traffic to providing up-to-date asset-level ESG metrics to asset owners, asset managers, rating providers and index providers at large scale by analyzing tons of remotely sensed and other data sources. The greater variety, the fast adoption to emerging market needs and technological advancements and us helping shape the future objective ESG reporting framework are just a few of the things that make my job exciting.
The Truly Inspiring Leadership of Our CEO, Maneesh Sagar — If not for the faith Maneesh had on all of us at RS Metrics, none of us would be who we are today. Constantly challenging us while leaving room for us to make mistakes and learn from them, constantly finding time to share his wisdom and to guide us individually and giving everyone an opportunity to rise and shine makes this job not just exciting but also well worthy.
Working with a Self-Motivated, Dedicated, and Talented Young Team — It is always a pleasure to work with the super talented, self motivated young team we have at RS Metrics and we keep on pushing our limits to become better everyday and as a result together we make the impossible possible.
What do you see in the future of data science?
Data Science is truly a combination of art and science and one who is both technically savvy and creative in nature can become a great data scientist. Given the continuous explosion of data and the ability of that data (fully or in part) to aid in critical business decisions if used appropriately make the future of data science very promising. The methodologies and technologies will evolve rapidly, yet one who is able to adapt to change fast and understand a problem at its core will survive and will become very successful. That’s in terms of how data science would be in the future as a career.
On the other hand, data science can help make many businesses successful as it can not only generate great insights but also provide timely solutions that were previously impossible to make without data and data science. The role of data science within a company is not limited as part of a new product development but also to make internal operations, client communications more effective and efficient and hence, in the future, data science will be an even more integrated element of all operations of an organization if not already.
As the MD for RS Metrics Asia Holdings, Rashmi is responsible for executing RS Metrics’ business strategy and ensuring operational excellence globally. She is also the Chief Data Scientist for RS Metrics and is responsible for designing and developing analytical products that combines internal and external data to generate actionable insights, continuously expanding data science capabilities within the organization, guiding the diverse product development team consisting of Software Engineers, Data Scientists and System Support Analysts etc.
Rashmi holds a PhD in Statistics from the Pennsylvania State University and a BSc Special Degree in Statistics, with honors and the gold medal for the best student in Statistics, from the University of Colombo. Prior to pursuing her PhD, Rashmi was an Associate Vice President at Amba Research Lanka (Pvt) Ltd (Now Acuity Knowledge Partners), a financial services provider for Wall Street clients, where she implemented novel portfolio optimization algorithms, change detection algorithms as well as trained and managed a group of quantitative analysts. She also served as an online instructor for graduate level Statistics courses for Penn State World Campus for several years. Currently, she is also a member of the Board of Management for Center for Data Science, University of Colombo.
Apart from her professional career, Rashmi is also a mother to a dear daughter who is almost 3 years old. In her free time, Rashmi enjoys singing, cooking and baking, doing arts and crafts and she is also a singer who has won national level competitions and also has been a dubbing artist for the national television, Sri Lanka.
