Jayanth Bhargav, Ph.D.
Hello and welcome!
I am a Senior AI Scientist with the Personalization and Recommendations (PRZ) team at Target. My work focuses on real-time ranking algorithms, item-item associativity modeling for cold-start recommendations, category-aware personalization, and customer behavior modeling. Particularly, I build and deploy scalable recommender systems that incorporate foundation and generative AI models that adapt to user preferences, capture product- and category-specific signals, and personalize discovery experiences across diverse customer segments.
My expertise spans algorithm design, large-scale optimization, inference systems, and decision-making under uncertainty. I am particularly interested in building AI systems that are not only effective in practice, but also grounded in principled methods from information theory, optimization, game theory and reinforcement learning.
Research Interests
- Decision-Making Under Uncertainty: Algorithms and models for making optimal decisions in dynamic and uncertain environments.
- Reinforcement Learning: Developing RL algorithms for collaborative and competitive multi-agent systems.
- Resource-Constrained and Task-Oriented Decision-Making: Designing efficient decision frameworks for systems with limited resources and task-specific constraints.
- Optimization for Online Learning: Developing scalable optimization techniques to improve online learning and adaptation in non-stationary environments.
- Game-Theoretic Decision-Making: Applying game theory to optimize resource allocation and coordination in large-scale distributed systems.
Experience
| Aug '25 - Present |
Sr. AI Scientist - Personalization & Recommendations (PRZ) Target, Minneapolis MN USA |
| Jun '22 - Aug '22 |
PhD Intern - Machine Learning Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland WA USA |
Education
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Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) - Electrical & Computer Engineering Purdue University, West Lafayette IN USA |
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Master of Science in Engineering (MSE) - Electrical & Systems Engineering University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA USA |
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Bachelor of Engineering (BE) - Electrical & Electronics Engineering RV College of Engineering, Bengaluru KA India |
Awards
| Feb 2024 | Best Poster Award, ICON Student Research Conference (SRC) 2024 |
| Apr 2022 | Outstanding Graduate Mentor - Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University |
| May 2021 | School of Engineering and Applied Science - Outstanding Award for Service, University of Pennsylvania |
| Aug 2019 | Gold Medal in Electrical and Electronics Engineering, RV College of Engineering |
| May 2019 | Sorroco Award for Best Outgoing Student of Graduating Batch of 2019, RV College of Engineering |
| Aug 2015 | Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) Scholarship for Merit and Excellence |
Contact
| jayanthkbhargav@gmail.com | |
| Office | 1000 Nicollet Mall Minneapolis MN 55403 |