Ammad Jilani, BS '93
On any given day, Ammad Jilani connects with people all over the world. Now that so much is online and computerized, business teams can be comprised of global citizens, he explains, adding that the only downside is a disruption in sleep patterns when interacting with team members on the other side of the world.
Ammad Jilani, Global Communication Solutions
A variety of roles in his career has guided Jilani to be involved in the development of next-level generation AI and natural language processing systems. Yet, he entered the field unintentionally.
“As I was facing a systems problem with my team, I realized that we could create a machine to analyze and solve the problem for us,” Jilani says.
The program solved the problem, and Jilani has never looked back. He has continued developing his skills using AI and machine learning for the benefit of ecommerce, retail and healthcare industries at Ernst & Young, Accenture, Sony Corporation, IBM, Apple Inc., Gravitant Inc., and others. Most recently, he worked with Austin-based Quantified Communications.
“Machine learning, data science, AI—at the end of the day, it is data in a database and visualization of that data,” Jilani says.
According to Jilani, machines crunch reams of data and find an anomaly, giving data scientists the necessary information to make an innovation or solve a complex problem. Natural language processing is a system of artificial intelligence that analyzes, learns and ultimately generates human speech. This gives the ability to interact with a computer system seamlessly and without having to rely on programming language or paper-based records for healthcare professionals, for example.
In some of his recent work, Jilani led a team that provided language communication solutions for personal and organizational effectiveness.
“Imagine recording audio and video of someone giving a speech, and then breaking it down into mathematical components that are loaded into the system with thousands upon thousands of other speeches,” Jilani says. “Every movement, gesture and micro-gesture such as an eyebrow twitch can then be compared to others and information can be produced to help that person communicate in the most effective way—how they’re speaking and what can be done to improve their communication, come across as more confident or trustworthy.”
Jilani says Baylor’s learning environment was the perfect place for him as a student and is an advantage for those interested in data sciences.
“The smaller class size and the one-on-one access I had to brilliant people with PhDs played such an integral part of what I am today,” he says. “It was a huge competitive advantage.”
Further, he says Baylor instilled in him the value of time management, the ability to work with others on a team and the value of learning.
“Everything I am doing today, none of it existed when I was at Baylor,” he says. “A lot of it didn’t exist a year ago. Baylor taught me to be curious and to always be open to learning new things. Whether in medicine, engineering or any field, you always have to keep learning. In the future, AI and machine learning are areas that will only continue to grow and become essential to innovation and practice.”