Sooraj M Raveendran

Sooraj Raveendran is a part of the IIHS Urban Informatics Lab, and seeks to understand how cities function and transform, applying various quantitative methods and using data from a diverse set of sources including censuses, sample surveys, satellite imagery, textual information, sensors, etc. At IIHS, he has worked on a wide range of areas like high resolution population mapping, geographical distribution of economic activity and employment, financial feasibility of low-income housing schemes, urban growth projection, determinants of child malnutrition, sustainable energy use for thermal comfort, and so on. He has also anchored multiple courses that teach basic data skills, data visualisation and quantitative research methods.

Previously, Sooraj led a data science team working on business analytics and marketing problems in a technology company. Before that, he was a key member of the team that conceptualised, designed, implemented, deployed, and systematically assessed (using randomised experiments) a personalised content recommender for a video streaming platform. Sooraj has extensive experience in applying data visualisation, statistical inference and machine learning to complex real-world problems.

His recent areas of focus include Bayesian modelling and spatial statistics, particularly model-based geostatistics, small area estimation and aerial data disaggregation. He holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science and a master’s degree in statistics.