.Nalini Polavarapu

Dr. Nalini Polavarapu, a 10-year Bayer veteran, manages a global team of analytical and IT professionals specializing in machine learning, operations research and cloud analytics with a goal to deliver better products to market faster using data science. Activities range from inventing cognitive systems to enhance decision making, predictive and prescriptive analytics to automate/augment decisions, geo-spatial and image analytics to realize precision farming, and analytics to increase operational efficiency. Nalini also serves as the senior leader on the Data Science Center of Excellence Council partnering to drive efforts to realize the vision of transforming Bayer into a digital company through data science. She has aided in mplementing an enterprise wide talent and community development strategy, scalable technology platforms, best practices for development and deployment of analytical solutions and portfolio management. Over the course of her career, Nalini held positions of increasing levels of leadership responsibilities managing teams operating across geographies in Americas, EMEA, Asia and Africa, and has successfully established and led an off-shore center in India. She also initiated multiple external partnerships and collaborations with start-ups, large corporations and universities. Being the first data scientist at Monsanto, Nalini played a key role in building a world-class global data science organization which is now at 300+ and growing through hiring and development of data scientists, data science leaders, as well as positions of seniority within the groups.