Vadim Smolyakov is a Machine Learning Engineer on the Business and Industry Copilot (BIC) team at Microsoft, where he works on Copilot AI. His current focus is on developing generative AI products at scale and leading diverse teams, turning rapid advances in large language models into capabilities that hold up in real business environments.

Before joining Microsoft, Vadim built machine learning solutions in the e-commerce space, an environment that rewards practical results and taught him what it takes to move models from notebooks into production. He later pursued a PhD in AI at MIT CSAIL, with research interests in Bayesian inference and deep learning, and that combination of academic depth and industry pragmatism defines his approach to machine learning: rigorous about the math, relentless about shipping.

Vadim is the author of Machine Learning Algorithms in Depth, published by Manning. The book takes a principled tour of core algorithms, from classical methods to deep learning and probabilistic modeling, with code available in an accompanying GitHub repository. Through his engineering work, research background, and writing, he helps practitioners understand not just how to apply machine learning, but why it works.