Varun is a Senior Principal AI Solutions Engineer at SambaNova Systems. He is currently investigating the benefits of fine-tuning embedding & decoder LLMs in retrieval augmented generation (RAG). Previously, he led the deployment of AI/ML applications across CRM, e-commerce, healthcare, finance, energy, manufacturing, fraud detection, and cyber security at Fortune 500 enterprises. He has worked at C3.ai, Cisco, IBM Research, ABB, and research institutes in Singapore. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.