Daya Shankar | Founder & Chief AI Officer, VaidyaAI, Dean School of Sciences & AI Faculty, Woxsen University
Woxsen University

Dr. Daya Shankar Founder & Chief AI Officer, VaidyaAI | Dean, School of Sciences & AI Faculty, Woxsen University A PhD in Nuclear Thermal Hydraulics from IIT Guwahati is not the most obvious starting point for a conversation about freight resilience — but that is precisely what makes Dr. Daya Shankar's perspective distinctive. His doctoral research at IIT Guwahati involved modelling fluid and thermal behaviour in systems that simply cannot fail under extreme conditions. That same engineering instinct — predicting instability before it happens, designing for the worst-case scenario — now drives his work in AI, where he builds systems that turn complex, real-world operational data into intelligent, anticipatory decisions. As the founder of VaidyaAI, he has demonstrated what it means to deploy AI not as a concept but as a functioning clinical infrastructure — one that has now analysed over 1,500 prescriptions, caught 47 critical errors, and operates with zero false negatives. The discipline behind that is the same discipline needed in climate-resilient freight: precision modelling, consequence-aware design, and systems that hold under pressure. At Asia Pacific Rail 2026, Dr. Shankar will explore how AI-driven predictive frameworks — rooted in the same physics that governs extreme thermal and hydraulic events — can be applied to freight networks facing the growing unpredictability of climate conditions across the Asia Pacific region.