Candidates should have excellent communication skills and a willingness to adapt to the challenges of doing applied work for social good.

Confocal microscopy

Bala Raja Preetham Reddimasu, who goes by Preetham, studied Computer Science and Engineering with a specialization in AI and ML at NGIT Hyderabad. He has a keen curiosity for exploring innovative ideas. In his free time, he enjoys playing chess. Preetham is particularly interested in the applications of Generative AI and is currently focused on learning the fundamentals of Quantum Computing. He is excited to contribute to the team and looks forward to collaborating with everyone.

Resolution and magnification are not the same. In microscopy, we refer to the details visible in a magnified image as resolution. Magnification, or making something appear larger, doesn’t do you much good if you cannot see the detail in the sample you’ve magnified.

Fluorescencemicroscope

It’s pretty important to understand the difference between magnification and resolution when it comes to getting a good result when you’re doing fluorescence imaging. When we talk about magnification, we are referring to how much bigger an object appears when we look at it under the microscope.

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.

Type ofmicroscope

Darkfieldmicroscopy

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.

If you use additional lenses to increase your ability to magnify a sample, you’ve got a compound microscope. Most modern microscopes are compound microscopes, because the additional magnification gives a more enlarged image. If only white light is used for illumination, then it’s bright-field microscopy.

Figure 3. An image of the same field of BPAE cells captured using brightfield (left) and fluorescence (right) microscopy. Fluorescent labeling of the nucleus (yellow) and actin (red) makes it possible to see much more detailed cell structure.

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:

Opticalmicroscope

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.

Light fieldmicroscopy

In contrast, when we talk about resolution in a practical sense, we are referring to how much detail we can distinguish in our image, which can be subjective. In a more technical sense, resolution is limited by the refractive properties of light.

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.

Bright-field microscopy relies on the differences in absorption of light due to differences in densities between various parts of the sample, which for our purposes is a cell. Because of this, bright-field microscopy is not great when you want to see many details in your cell. How do you increase your resolution? Add in fluorophores to stain structures in your sample and filters to illuminate it, focus the light emitted by the sample, add a sensitive detector, and voila! Now you can do fluorescence microscopy. Fluorescence microscopy gives you the advantage of better resolution by making various structures in the cells contrast better with their neighbors, as well as allowing you to collect images in more than one color.

A microscope magnifies objects; more lenses translate to higher magnification. In its most basic form, a microscope is simply a device that allows you to see things that are not visible to the naked eye by the use of lenses to magnify your sample. That means a magnifying glass is technically also a microscope. If you use light along with a lens, you’ve got something called an optic or light microscope.

Figure 2.The light path through lenses and sample in basic brightfield microscopy (A). Antique 19th century drum-style compound microscope (B).

Microscopes are powerful research and discovery tools and have contributed to countless ground-breaking discoveries, over several centuries.

Find basic definitions for common microscopy terms, information to help you understand differences between magnification and resolution, and how fluorescence can be used to improve contrast and increase resolution.