Talent Spotlight: Puja Pande

Meet Puja. After taking on her very first competition on the Zindi platform last year and winning, Puja’s determination to blend her love for the environment with data-driven insights paves the way for her success. As a graduate student balancing a strong foundation in environmental and geographical sciences with a growing passion for data science, Zindi has provided her with a practical platform to apply her skills and win some prize money working on real problems.

Blending passions

Born and raised in the warm city of Durban, South Africa, Puja developed a deep appreciation for the natural world and studied Geomatics with a specialisation in Environmental and Geographical Sciences (EGS) for her bachelor of science degree at the University of Cape Town. Puja had discovered a love for statistics during high school, hence, she switched majors after her first year to pursue a BSc in Applied Statistics and EGS. This blend of interests drove her to explore the intersection of these fields, leading to an Honours research project that combined both disciplines. This led to Puja pursuing a Master’s in Data Science to continue her interdisciplinary work.

Joining Zindi

Puja was first introduced to Zindi through her lecturers when she began her Master’s program in Data Science. The program’s structure, which included a year of coursework followed by a year dedicated to thesis work, provided the perfect opportunity for her to explore data science competitions. They encouraged her and her peers to participate in data challenges on platforms like Zindi, emphasizing that these experiences would help them practice their skills and add to their portfolios.

Although Puja had known about Zindi for some time, it wasn’t until RMB’s Nowcasting challenge that she decided to join the platform officially in 2023. She and a few friends entered the competition as a team, but due to the demanding coursework, they struggled to find the time to engage fully.

Perseverance pays off

Despite the difficulties of engaging fully in the challenge as a team, Puja decided to continue the challenge on her own and won the competition!

“Zindi grants the opportunity to work on real-life problems, and being able to upskill without having to do extra courses has been a very interesting and hands-on experience,” she said in a recent interview.

Faced with the demanding academic workload and pressures of her thesis, Puja remains committed to learning and growing her skills. She’s currently signed up for the Spatio-Temporal Beam-Level Traffic Forecasting Challenge on Zindi. Her approach to the competitions has been primarily about the invaluable learning opportunities they present. “I did not know much about the CPI index, and ended up doing a few readings and some research into what it was and what attributes may be important for making predictions. This was very helpful and gave me a clearer picture of the problem and how to tackle it,” she added.

Pathway to success

Puja is still in the early stages of her data science career, with her main focus on completing her Master’s degree. While she has not yet faced the challenges of working in the field, she is confident that the experiences and skills gained through Zindi will serve her well in the future.

“Zindi has allowed me to learn through experience which I have enjoyed and I can now use these skills and other knowledge in my professional life. Zindi also acts as a CV through the profile page, which is another way for employers to see my skills and accomplishments which, again, contributes to my professional development.” You can create and edit your own Zindi profile here.

Puja advises women to step out of their comfort zones and participate in data challenges, emphasizing the importance of owning their skills and taking the leap. As a woman in a traditionally male-dominated field, Puja acknowledges the intimidation she initially felt when joining Zindi. For Puja, Zindi is the right platform for learning, and growing and also a stepping stone towards greater representation of women in data science.

Puja is among thousands of people on the Zindi platform building their skills and ready for their next challenge. If you’re looking to get a job in data, or hire top, vetted AI and data science talent, contact Zindi.