Satyen Abrol

Dr. Satyen Abrol is a seasoned leader in machine learning, personalization, and recommender systems, currently heading the Personalization and Recommendation teams at Glance as Vice President of Machine Learning, where he drives innovation in user-centric AI and large-scale recommendation platforms. Before joining Glance, Satyen served as Director of Research (Data Science) at Rakuten, leading cross-geographical teams on customer understanding, marketing science, social graph research, fraud prevention, and recommendation systems that span ecommerce, mobile, and fintech applications. His work at Rakuten included building scalable customer social graph embeddings and audience science frameworks that enhanced user engagement and business outcomes. Earlier in his career, Satyen held key technical roles at Samsung Electronics, where he developed large-scale machine learning models and production pipelines to infer smartphone user demographics and interests from behavioral and app usage data, powering personalized experiences across Samsung’s ecosystem. He also worked at VMware (California), contributing to performance data analysis, pattern recognition modules, and scalable system design. Satyen holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Dallas, where his dissertation focused on “Location Mining in Online Social Networks”, advancing methodologies in graph-based data mining and semi-supervised learning. He is an active researcher and innovator with 15+ publications in peer-reviewed conferences and journals, 20+ patents in areas spanning recommendation systems, user profiling, and machine learning, and is co-author of the book Analyzing and Securing Social Networks—a comprehensive exploration of social media analytics and privacy frameworks. Satyen’s expertise spans AI/ML research, scalable systems, user modeling, and data-driven personalization, making him a sought-after speaker and mentor in both industry and academic forums.