We combined machine learning and epidemiological modelling to help public authorities manage critical healthcare resources, deliver targeted interventions and track disease spread within communities.
Covid’s impact has been enough to ravage healthcare systems all over the world. In densely populated areas with limited health resources and long lead times for meeting the demands of increased case numbers, there was a need to efficiently test at-risk patients, quarantine infected people and treat those with severe symptoms.
To reduce deaths, ensuring adequate capacity – such as ventilator-equipped hospital beds and oxygen supplies – and availability of critical healthcare infrastructure is critical. Local authorities had to adopt a proactive stance so that the disease would not overwhelm public health facilities. There was a need for forecasting reported infections at a local level to inform capacity planning, model the effects of policy changes and prepare for potential scenarios.
We are grateful that our work has been supported by donors such as USAID, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Fondation Botnar.
Wadhwani AI is a program of the AI Unit of the Lords Education and Health Society (LEHS)
© 2025 Wadhwani AI
ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
An ML Engineer at Wadhwani AI will be responsible for building robust machine learning solutions to problems of societal importance; usually under the guidance of senior ML scientists, and in collaboration with dedicated software engineers. To our partners, a Wadhwani AI solution is generally a decision making tool that requires some piece of data to engage. It will be your responsibility to ensure that the information provided using that piece of data is sound. This not only requires robust learned models, but pipelines over which those models can be built, tweaked, tested, and monitored. The following subsections provide details from the perspective of solution design:
Early stage of proof of concept (PoC)
Late PoC
This is early to mid-stage of AI product development
Post PoC
Responsibilities during production deployment
We realize this list is broad and extensive. While the ideal candidate has some exposure to each of these topics, we also envision great candidates being experts at some subset. If either of those cases happens to be you, please apply.
DESIRED QUALIFICATIONS
Master’s degree or above in a STEM field. Several years of experience getting their hands dirty applying their craft.
Programming
ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
As an ML Scientist at Wadhwani AI, you will be responsible for building robust machine learning solutions to problems of societal importance, usually under the guidance of senior ML scientists. You will participate in translating a problem in the social sector to a well-defined AI problem, in the development and execution of algorithms and solutions to the problem, in the successful and scaled deployment of the AI solution, and in defining appropriate metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of the deployed solution.
In order to apply machine learning for social good, you will need to understand user challenges and their context, curate and transform data, train and validate models, run simulations, and broadly derive insights from data. In doing so, you will work in cross-functional teams spanning ML modeling, engineering, product, and domain experts. You will also interface with social sector organizations as appropriate.
REQUIREMENTS
Associate ML scientists will have a strong academic background in a quantitative field (see below) at the Bachelor’s or Master’s level, with project experience in applied machine learning. They will possess demonstrable skills in coding, data mining and analysis, and building and implementing ML or statistical models. Where needed, they will have to learn and adapt to the requirements imposed by real-life, scaled deployments.
Candidates should have excellent communication skills and a willingness to adapt to the challenges of doing applied work for social good.
DESIRED QUALIFICATIONS
