About the Authors

Dr. PKS Prakash is a data scientist and an author. He has spent the last 12 years developing many data science solutions to problems from leading companies in the healthcare, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, and e-commerce domain. He is working as a Data Science Manager at ZS Associates.

ZS is one of the world's largest business service firms, helping clients with commercial success by creating data-driven strategies using advanced analytics, which they can implement within their sales and marketing operations to make them more competitive, and by helping them deliver impact where it matters.

Prakash obtained a PhD in Industrial and System Engineering from Wisconsin-Madison, US. He defended his second PhD in Engineering from University of Warwick, UK. His educational background also includes a master's degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, US, and a bachelor's degree from National Institute of Foundry and Forge Technology (NIFFT), India. He is the co-founder of Warwick Analytics, which is based on his PhD work from the University of Warwick, UK.

Prakash is published widely in research areas of operational research and management, soft computing tools, and advance algorithms in leading journals such as IEEE-Trans, EJOR, and IJPR, among others. He has edited an issue of Intelligent Approaches to Complex Systems and contributed to Evolutionary Computing in Advanced Manufacturing, published by Wiley, and Algorithms and Data Structures Using R, published by Packt.

This book would not have been possible without the support and love from my wife, Dr. Ritika Singh, and my daughter, Nishidha Singh. Also, I would like to extend my special thanks to so many people from the Packt team whose names may not all be mentioned, but their contribution is sincerely appreciated and gratefully acknowledged. The book started with an early discussion with Aman Singh (Acquisition Editor), so I want to extend special thanks to him as without his input, this book would have never happened. Also, I want to thank Tejas Limkar (Content Development Editor) for continuously pushing us and getting the book delivered on time. I would like to extend thanks to all the reviewers, whose feedback has helped us tremendously in improving the book.

Achyutuni Sri Krishna Rao is a data scientist, a civil engineer, and an author. He has spent the last four years developing many data science solutions to problems from leading companies in the healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and manufacturing. He is working as a Data Science Consultant at ZS Associates.

Sri Krishna's background includes a master's degree in Enterprise Business Analytics and Machine Learning from National University of Singapore, Singapore. His educational background also includes a bachelor's degree from National Institute of Technology Warangal, India.

Sri Krishna is published widely in research areas of civil engineering. He has contributed to a book titled Algorithms and Data Structures Using R, published by Packt.

The journey of this book has been quite memorable, and I would like to give the credit to my loving wife and my baby (on the way). I like to extend special thanks to my caring parents and my adorable sister. Also, I would gratefully acknowledge the support from the entire Packt team, especially Aman Singh (Acquisition Editor) and Tejas Limkar (Content Development Editor), for striving to get the book delivered on time. I would like to extend thanks to all the reviewers, whose feedback has helped us tremendously in improving the book.