“Ad astra per aspera”
Through hardships to the stars.
— Latin proverb
“Αἰὲν ἀριστεύειν”
Ever to excel.
— Homer, Iliad
Hello, I'm
Venetis-Paraskevas Pallikaras
Senior Data Scientist
I currently serve as a Senior Data Scientist at Navy Federal Credit Union (USA), where I design and deploy production-scale AI systems focused on NLP, Generative AI applications, Advanced Machine Learning, and Deep Learning.
Previously, I worked at General Electric (USA) and the National Centre for Scientific Research "Demokritos" (Greece).
I hold an M.Sc. in Analytics from the Georgia Institute of Technology (4.0 GPA) and a joint B.Sc. & M.Sc. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Democritus University of Thrace (8.85/10 | 3.7/4.0 GPA), graduating second in my class (Salutatorian).
My work focuses on architecting end-to-end AI systems, spanning traditional machine learning, deep neural networks, and modern generative AI architectures. I build scalable pipelines that range from supervised and unsupervised learning models to agentic workflows, automation pipelines, LLM-powered insight discovery, and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems.
Beyond building production-grade AI solutions, I am passionate about advancing enterprise AI adoption, mentoring teams, educating stakeholders, and enabling organizations to responsibly and effectively leverage Machine Learning and Generative AI.
Resume
Summary
Senior Data Scientist specializing in NLP, Generative AI, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning. Proven experience architecting and deploying production-scale LLM pipelines, RAG systems, agentic AI workflows, and advanced predictive models in enterprise environments.
Education
Georgia Institute of Technology
Aug 2021 – Dec 2022MSc in Analytics · Atlanta, GA, USA
GPA: 4.0 / 4.0
Democritus University of Thrace
Oct 2014 – Nov 2019BSc & MSc in Electrical and Computer Engineering · Xanthi, Xanthi, Greece
GPA: 8.85 / 10 "Excellent", 3.7 / 4.0 (WES Course by Course Evaluation)
- Second Among Graduating Year (Salutatorian)
- Thesis: Automated speaker diarization and recognition in videos (Grade: 10/10)
Work Experience
Navy Federal Credit Union
2023 – PresentSenior Data Scientist, Data Scientist · Vienna, VA, USA
Georgia Institute of Technology
2022 – 2023Graduate Teaching Assistant · Atlanta, GA, USA
General Electric
2022Data Science Intern · Atlanta, GA, USA
HelcoML Systems
2019 – 2021Data Scientist · Athens, Attica, Greece
National Centre for Scientific Research "Demokritos"
2018Research Intern · Athens, Attica, Greece
Publications
K. Prantikos, V. Pallikaras, M. Pantopoulou, L.H. Tsoukalas, A. Heifetz
2024 ANS Winter Conference and Expo
K. Prantikos, V. Pallikaras, M. Pantopoulou, L.H. Tsoukalas, A. Heifetz
2024 ANS Winter Conference and Expo
Skills
Programming Languages
Python, SQL, R, Java, JavaScript, C++, C
ML & DL Software
Tensorflow, Keras, Pytorch, Scikit-Learn, HDBSCAN, XGBoost, LightGBM, Optuna, HyperOpt, PySpark, PYG, TinyML
NLP & Generative AI Software
NLTK, SpaCy, BERTopic, KeyBert, Hugging Face, Transformers, vLLM, LangChain, LlamaIndex, Unsloth, Axolotl, Megatron, LangGraph, Azure AI Foundry, n8n, Agent Reinforcement Trainer (ART), Copilot Studio, AutoGen
Analytical Techniques
Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Web Scraping, Computer Vision, GraphML, NLP, LLMs, Generative AI, Reinforcement Learning, LLM-Finetuning, GRPO
Visualization
Tableau, Plotly, Dash, Seaborn, D3.js, Matplotlib
Data & Cloud Platforms
Databricks, Azure, AWS
Other
Git, Linux, HTML, CSS, Beautiful Soup, Selenium, Pinecone, MLflow, Weights & Biases, FastAPI, LangSmith, Modal, Vercel
