Pratima Kshetry

I've been in the healthcare industry for almost 13 years, ever since I graduated. I started my career at the American Foundation for AIDS Research (AMFAR) in Washington, D.C., where I worked for about a year. I then moved to Johns Hopkins, where I spent a little more than seven and a half years. That's where I really got to dive deep into patient data sets, the EMR and clinical data sets, and that's how my journey began into clinical healthcare AI. At Hopkins, I started doing machine learning work. In 2024, I was hired by University of Maryland Medical System, where I continued doing a lot of machine learning and AI work, though I had to leave due to commute challenges and family responsibilities. Now I'm with Narostello, a pharmatech company, where I work as a Senior LLM AI Scientist. I've been in this role for about 8 months. My role requires me to mentor data scientists and data engineers while also being very hands-on with coding and AI work, because the current demand in clinical healthcare is that a leader should be both mentoring and hands-on. I'm also a faculty member at the University of Maryland College Park, where I teach part-time. As a first-generation immigrant from Nepal who moved to the United States about 10 years ago, I'm very proud of making a mark for myself in this highly competitive healthcare AI space, especially in large language models, where there is very limited female participation. I balance my professional life as a full-time AI scientist and part-time teacher with being a full-time mother to my son.