Profile
Arpita Saggar
-
About Me:
I’m a PhD student at the University of Leeds and my work uses AI to support medical education. I was born and raised in India and I moved to the UK in 2022. I enjoy listening to classical music, playing badminton and chess, and cubing.
-
My pronouns are:
she/her
-
My Work:
My research is broadly focused around simulation of virtual patients. This involves creating a video based AI avatar that medical students can interact with to practice clinical communication skills. Most of my work uses generative models, including large language models like ChatGPT.
-
My Typical Day:
I start my day with a cup of coffee and breakfast. I’m not really a morning person so I begin with the least interesting tasks, i.e., prepping for meetings and answering emails. I spend the rest of the day either reading relevant research or coding up my experiments. I generally work from home and don’t follow a rigid 9 to 5 schedule as I feel much more productive in the evenings. I love listening to music and often have my headphones on for the better part of the day.
-
Education:
I went to school in New Delhi in India. I received both my undergrad and my first masters from the University of Delhi.
-
Qualifications:
University of Leeds – PhD (ongoing)
University of Delhi – Master of Computer Applications and B.Sc. (Hons) Computer Science
-
Work History:
Data Science for Social Good Fellow, University of Warwick
Worked on a project with UNICEF and Save the Children to predict multi-
dimensional child poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa.Research Intern, University of Delhi
Worked on research projects investigating the use of AI for breast cancer subtype classification, and identifying COVID-19 in chest x-rays.
Volunteer, The Uplift Project, GirlScript Foundation
Taught programming to high school students.
-
Current Job:
PhD student
-
Employer:
University of Leeds
-
My Interview
-
What did you want to be after you left school?
A scientist
Were you ever in trouble at school?
Not really
If you weren't doing this job, what would you choose instead?
Probably something similar, like a software developer
Who is your favourite singer or band?
BTS and Coldplay
What's your favourite food?
Anything Italian!
Tell us a joke.
An opinion without 3.14 is just an onion
-