I am excited to share the completion of Phase 1 of my Yoga Chatbot Project! This project focused on creating an interactive, AI capable of answering yoga-related questions about poses, philosophy, meditation, and Ayurveda.Project Highlights:• Experimenting with various NLP models to optimize for memory and space efficiency.• Collecting and expanding data from my website, using generative AI to develop a question-answer dataset.• Implementing custom intent recognition.• Training the chatbot on a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) model to give relevant, contextual responses.Skills Applied:• Natural Language Processing (NLP):Used tokenisation to get accurate language understanding, including text preprocessing and language model training.• Natural Language Understanding (NLU):Improved conversational accuracy by categorising relevant entities to recognise user intents.• Natural Language Generation (NLG):Testing models and selecting the most appropriate one to generate context-relevant responses.• Machine Learning (ML):Used various statistical methods for intent recognition, entity extraction, and optimised for accuracy.• Data Collection and Annotation:Curated, cleaned, and annotated a balanced dataset for training and testing.• Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG):Combined retrieval-based methods with generative models for quality responses.• Deployment and Scaling:Set up on Hugging Face Spaces for accessible interaction and scalability.• Programming:I achieved all of this using Python, its libraries, and MySQL database.Challenges:• Creating a clean and balanced dataset, as there are no previous datasets available from similar projects.• Maintaining consistent formatting (using markdown).• Handling space and memory limitations.

Earlier this year I became fascinated with the new and exciting tech that was becoming available, specifically AI and machine learning. I wanted to see if my previous experience programming would translate forward, and how easy it would be for me to learn the new format.I spent a few months reading, and playing around with small projects. I had so much fun, that I decided I would try to shift back into this area of work permanently. Particularly as it seems that there are lots of new developments and opportunities coming up at the moment.

In my spare time I built my own website pranayoga.co.inI did everything from the search engine optimisation to the design. As well as writing around 250 articles with accompanying photographs.I also consolidated my knowledge and created a comprehensive study and teaching text book that is now in used in many yoga schools, and students from all over the world.

Next I began teaching Teacher training programs for schools across India and Asia. I realised that the courses often lacked structure, so early on I started designing my own ways to teach. I took on more roles in scheduling, managing and designing classes. Until I was leading and organising wherever I taught.

I completed an advanced yoga teacher training course in Rishikesh, and spent a few more months teaching there. Then moved to Mysore to learn the traditional yoga system from there.

I wanted to continue travelling, so I spent time living in the Himalayas and worked in a variety of roles that would allow me to earn while I was exploring. Yoga Teaching - Regular classes to groups in the GymRock Climbing Instructor- Taught rock climbing with strength and recovery in an indoor gym, as well as guiding people for climbing sports routes outdoors.Mountaineering Guide - Took novice explorers to climb Mount Goleb Kangri and Mount Stok Kangri in Ladakh.Therapeutic Yoga - trained people with various illnesses and injuries and adapted practice for their capabilities and saw huge improvements.

I went on to study yoga and meditation. Starting with completing a Yoga teachers training course, along with many weeks of in depth personal study. This began my passion for yoga and the healing it can bring, and persuaded me to pursue jobs that would allow me to continue this research.

I took a break from IT to pursue adventure sports, and work on my personal growth. I completed advanced and challenging courses in mountaineering, climbing, and paragliding, teaching me about grit and determination.

Comverse Technologies (Onsite Assignment for Orange Telecom)I had the opportunity to work onsite at Comverse Technologies on a high-profile project for Orange Telecom. As a key team member, I was responsible for:- Maintaining the website portal, ensuring seamless user experience- Identifying and resolving system bugs, enhancing overall performanceI really enjoyed the technical aspects of this job but family circumstances led me to try something different.

Project 1: Ricoh Company Ltd.As a production support, development, and middleware specialist, I aimed to streamline data transfer from Siebel and JDE systems to Oracle applications. I leveraged WebSphere message queues and brokers to process diverse data file formats.Project 2: BSKYB (Customer Sales Application)I worked on the development of BSKYB, an application used by Sky's customer sales representatives to sell products like DTV, broadband, and telephony. Key features included:- Integration with third-party systems for payment processing, ordering, and scheduling- Utilization of Chordiant framework- Message queues and brokers for seamless connectivity

Project 1 - Staples Partners Portal (Development and Migration)Initially, I maintained the Staples partners portal, handling change requests, bug fixes, unit testing, stored procedure development, and shell scripting. This project involved a dual profile of development and migration re-engineering, transitioning the legacy ASP and MS SQL Server system to J2EE framework and Oracle 10g.Project 2 - Real time vendor accessSubsequently, I worked on an extension project, "Real-Time Vendor Access," designed to enhance vendor experience by providing filtered sales and inventory data. I was responsible for:- Designing and coding- Testing- Developing stored procedures- Shell scriptingThe output was delivered in HTML, CSV, and PDF formats.

Between finishing my B.E and joining cognizant, I spent 5 months teaching physics at Techno mission school to class XI and XII. I enjoyed encouraging young people to get into physics and showing them how it can be fun.

While studying electrical engineering full time at DCE (now DTU) I tutored Physics for class XI and XII and competitive exams. This was key to me learning time management and how to balance work load which would help me in the future.