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 retrieval & ranking algorithms, item-item associativity modeling, category-aware personalization, and customer behavior modeling. I research, build and deploy scalable recommendation algorithms incorporating 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, ML inference, and decision-making under uncertainty. I am particularly interested in designing scalable and computationally efficient AI/ML systems that are grounded in principled methods from machine learning, information theory, optimization, and reinforcement learning.
Research Interests
- Decision-Making Under Uncertainty: Bandit algorithms for making optimal decisions in dynamic and uncertain environments.
- Reinforcement Learning: RL algorithms for collaborative and competitive multi-agent systems.
- Resource-Constrained and Task-Oriented Decision-Making: Efficient decision frameworks grounded in optimization theory for systems with limited resources and task-specific constraints.
- Optimization for Online Learning: Scalable optimization techniques to improve online learning and adaptation in non-stationary environments.
- Game-Theoretic Decision-Making: Game theoretic frameworks for resource allocation and coordination in large-scale distributed systems.
Experience
| Aug '25 - Present |
Senior AI Scientist - Personalization & Recommendations (PRZ) Target, Minneapolis MN USA |
| Jun '22 - Aug '22 |
PhD Intern - Machine Learning Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland WA USA |
Education
Purdue University, West Lafayette IN USA |
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA USA |
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 |