I am a student at the University of Texas at Arlington, pursuing a master's degree in Computer Science and Engineering. I am working on my MS thesis under the guidance of Dr. Manfred Huber on feature learning and preemptive estimation of performance for KNN classifiers and regressors. I'm also working on implementing neural networks on FPGAs with Dr. Amir Farbin.
Before joining UTA, I was first an undergraduate student, and then a Research Associate at PESIT Bangalore South Campus (then affiliated to Visvesvaraya Technological University, now PES University) where I worked with Dr. Snehanshu Saha on a broad range of topics in machine learning and its applications to astronomy, finance, and scientometrics. I am set to begin pursuing a Ph.D. in Computer Science at Pennsylvania State University from Fall 2020 under the guidance of Dr. Mahanth Gowda.
My research interests are broadly in the areas of machine learning and intelligent systems. I am proficient in C, C++, and Python, and have a good amount of knowledge about a lot of other languages and programming tools such as Verilog, SQL, Java, MATLAB, Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Beagle Bone, Processing Language, LaTeX, Javascript, HTML/CSS, Tensorflow, numpy, scikit-learn, etc., and even some electronics but I use them on the basis of my needs in my current projects or work. I love the philosophy of open source and have contributed to ensmallen, a fast and flexible mathematical optimization library, written in C++.
On a less academic note, I am a musician and enjoy playing the guitar! I also try to paint and do different kinds of artsy stuff from time to time.
Papers
Here is a list of my published papers, and here's the link to my Google Scholar page!
Experience
Teaching Assistant, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, UTA (January 2020 – present): I am currently a teaching assistant of the graduate course Data Analysis and Modeling Techniques (CSE-5301) for Dr. Ramakrishna Prasad Koganti.
Peer Educator, IDEAS Center, UTA Faculty Affairs (August 2019 – December 2019): I tutored and mentored undergraduate and graduate students in mathematics, computer science, English and basic sciences, and mentored students with goal setting, time management, major exploration, etc. I was a designated tutor of an undergraduate course on linear algebra and differential equations (MATH-3319) under Dr. Gaik Ambartsoumian. I was also certified in the practice of question, pursuade and refer(QPR) for suicide prevention, and trained to accommodatethe needs of students from a wide spectrum of socioeconomic and sociocultural backgrounds.
Research Associate, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, PESIT Bangalore South Campus (July 2017 – July 2018): I worked on problems in astroinformatics, and mathematical modeling in finance with Dr. Snehanshu Saha, and collaborated with Dr. Jayant Murthy and Dr. Margarita Safonova from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, and Dr. Saibal Kar from the Center For Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. I also mentored senior undergraduate students with curriculum-related presentation.
Awards
Phi Kappa Phi Member(2019): Elected to Phi Kappa Phi (ΦKΦ), the oldest all-discipline honor society in the USA, for a superior scholarship. Elected students are in the top 10% of their class.
Tau Beta Pi Member(2019): Elected to Tau Beta Pi (TBΠ; Texas Eta Chapter), the oldest national engineering honor society in the USA, based on distinguished scholarship and exemplary character. Elected students are in the top 20% of their class.
Lone Star Non-Resident Tuition Waiver Scholarship(2018): Awarded by the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Texas at Arlington, eligible for in-state tuition rates (for Fall 2018 – Summer 2019).
Best Outgoing Student Award(2017): Awarded by the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, PESIT Bangalore South Campus for overall excellence and service to the institute (I'm not sure why they didn't call this award the 'Best Graduating Student Award' because that's what it is; a good friend of mine raised the concern that the title of this award may lead one to believe that I got the award for being 'outgoing' – just to be clear, no, I did not win an award for being outgoing).
Winner of theme prize Best Use of Algolia Search API, HackUTA 2018, Major League Hackathon, ACM and Allstatei Insurance Company.
Top 10 out of about 75 teams, inGenius Hackathon 2015, ACM India and PES Institute of Technology.
Runner Up (2nd/87 teams), inGenius Hackathon 2014, ACM India and PES Institute of Technology.
Music and Art
Some YouTube videos and SoundCloud clips:
In Spring 2020, I worked with my good friend Andrew Widmer on this short film (which was actually a classroom assignment of his). This was interesting: he got a lot of actors to act out the scene in the grid on ZOOM and recorded it. The original footage had lots of problems with it, and someone was excluded altogether. Plus, he wasn't at the focal point. I programmed the fix for this using OpenCV and Python (because, why not? :P) and tried to make the footage of the people in the grid a lot more cinematic. I also programmed the fade-out and darkening effect based on a simple gradient-based frame by frame brightness minimization. This was a really unique experience!
Andrew also had me as a subject for an interview assignment that he had to do. His theme was how I balance my main career and music. This was, in all honestly, a flattering experience.
In retrospect, my YouTube debut was when I was in senior year of high school, though! I had written the lyrics for the theme song of our school's fest, which was professionally produced. Damn, they really liked that song.
Misc
Reviewer for: Financial Innovation – Springer (2020), IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (2019, 2020)
Committee member for International Conference on Modeling, Machine Learning and Astronomy (MMLA 2019),Bangalore, India
