CV

General Information

Full Name Manish Dhakal
Languages Nepali, English
Position Graduate Research Assistant, Georgia State University
Summary Graduate Research Assistant at Georgia State University with expertise in medical image analysis, vision-language models, and reproducible machine learning project methodologies. Strong skills in writing scientific manuscripts and communicating methodologies, results, and implications effectively.

Experience

  • 2024 - 2029*
    Graduate Research Assistant
    Georgia State University
    • Student researcher at Collaborative Human AI (CHAI) Center, funded by US Department of Defense (DoD).
    • Deep learning projects on computer vision applications , collaborating with Army Research Lab (ARL).
    • Resource-friendly transfer learning with Parameter Efficient Fine-tuning (PEFT) and Adapters.
  • 2022 - 2024
    Research Assistant
    Nepal Applied Mathematics and Informatics Institute for research (NAAMII)
    Supervisor: Bishesh Khanal, Ph.D.
    • Developed skills for object detection and segmentation tasks on 2D medical images and explored their multi-modal approach ( esp. vision-language models ); also worked for segmentation with 3D mesh data.
    • Demonstrated strong skills in writing scientific manuscripts, with multiple papers submitted for review, showcasing the ability to communicate methodologies, results, and implications effectively.
    • Ensured reproducibility and modularity in ML projects by implementing robust methodologies and practices, allowing for the transparent and replicable programming of the projects.

Education

  • 2024 - 2029*
    Ph.D. in Computer Science
    Georgia State University
    Advisor: Yi Ding, Ph.D.
    • Research work in computer vision and natural language processing.
    • Awarded with graduate research assistantship (GRA) from the computer science department.
  • 2017 - 2022
    Bachelor in Computer Engineering
    Pulchowk Campus, Institute of Engineering, Tribhuvan University
    Thesis Supervisor: Prof. Subarna Shakya
    • Ranked 11th in the engineering entrance exam, competing with 15,000+ candidates, received full scholarship for undergraduate study.
    • Gained knowledge about significant CS courses like AI, Image Processing, Data Structure & Algorithm, DBMS, Software Engineering, and so on.
    • Thesis: Automatic speech recognition for low-resourced Nepali language which was later presented at an IEEE conference.

Teaching

  • 2023 - 2024
    Trainer
    Community Eye, ENT & Rehabilitation Center (CEERS)
    • Training a group of interns to develop medical imaging applications with the use of ML.
    • Instructing and guiding them about ML through activities like paper reading sessions, lab and lecture sessions, and topic presentations.
  • Spring 2023
    Teaching Assistant
    4th Annual Nepal AI School (ANAIS)
    • Guided participants through a series of labs related to neural networks, transformers, federated learning, graph neural networks, active learning, and so on.
    • Mentored three groups during Hack-a-Dev, a 10-day machine learning hackathon.
  • Summer 2021
    Programming Instructor
    Software Fellowship, Locus 2021
    • Provided tutoring on software development life cycle and assisted participants with software documentation and library/framework installation.
    • Taught participants about API development for web applications, emphasizing its concepts, best practices, and usage.

Projects

  • 2023
    Lower Limb Segmentation
    Medical Imaging
    Supervisor: Taman Upadhaya, Ph.D.
    • Conducted training experiments of different deep learning models on the remote server to segment three bones – knee, pelvis, and ankle – from CT scans of the lower limbs of patients.
    • Deployed a robust Python rest API on the remote server for the segmentation request from a client, with a pipeline including pre-processing, inference, and post-processing steps.
    • Ensured interoperability, reproducibility, and understandability of the deployed application using Docker, and well-structured documentation and comments.
  • 2023 - 2024
    Vision Language Segmentation Models (VLSMs) for Medical Images
    Medical Imaging
    • Reported zero-shot and finetuned segmentation performance of 4 VLSMs on 11 medical datasets using 9 types of prompts derived from 14 attributes, prompts are given as text conditioning informations.
    • Worked with encoder-decoder architecture to generate binary segmentation masks for VLSMs.
    • Tested the compatibility of the VLSMs (such as CLIPSeg and CRIS) pre-trained for open-domain images with medical images.
  • 2022 - 2024
    Object detection in 2D Orthopantomogram (OPG) Images
    Dental Imaging
    • Critically analyzed the literature and state-of-the-art models for different segmentation and detection tasks on radiology images of dentistry and their inadequacy.
    • Designed and developed the data annotation tool for object detection over 2D OPG images.
    • Working on identification and localization of dental anatomical structures and abnormalities while benchmarking with existing methods like YOLO, RetinaNet, RCNN, and FastRCNN.
  • Summer 2022
    Segmentation in 3D Teeth Scan
    MICCAI Challenge 2022
    • Learned about the representation and preprocessing of 3D mesh and point cloud data.
    • Benchmarked with different 3D point cloud segmentation models such as Pointnet/++ and DeltaConv.

Technical Skills

  • Machine Learning: Unimodal and multimodal (esp. vision-language model) ML project structuring for detection and segmentation task while maintaining reproducibility and modularity; integrating open source models for benchmarking. Proficiency in using libraries and frameworks like NumPy, Pandas, PyTorch, and TensorFlow.
  • Writing: Knowledge synthesis from the existing literature, writing scientific documents and manuscripts with LaTex, and communicating the results to the community with transparency.
  • Web Development: Competence in creating well-documented backend applications with relational databases using frameworks like Django, FastAPI, and NodeJS. Adept at client-side programming with ReactJS.
  • Remote Server: Able to work with remote Linux machines for coding and project deployment using SSH, shell script, tmux, Nginx, and Docker.

Open Source Projects

  • 2020
    SR-GAN
    • Open source implmentation of SuperResolution using GAN (SRGAN) in Keras framework.
  • 2020
    Nepali AutoComplete and LM
    • Open source implementation of Nepali AutoComplete and Language Model using LSTM in PyTorch framework.
  • 2020
    SahaYatri
    • Hackathon project to promote toursim in Nepal developed using Django and ReactJS.

Honors and Awards

  • 2024
    • LMIC Travel Grant by MICCAI.
    • Presidential Fellowship within TCV initiative by GSU (Only 6% of the doctoral students).
  • 2017
    • Undergraduate funded by Government of Nepal.

Academic Interests

  • AI/ML
    • Medical Imaging
    • Vision Language Model

References

  • Yi Ding, Ph.D.
    • Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, Georgia State University
    • [email protected]
  • Bishesh Khanal, Ph.D.
    • Research Director, Nepal Applied Mathematics and Informatics Institute for research (NAAMII)
    • [email protected]
  • Prof. Subarna Shakya
    • Professor of Computer Engineering, Department of Electronics and Computer Engineering, Pulchowk Campus, Institute of Engineering, Tribhuvan University
    • [email protected]
  • Taman Upadhaya, Ph.D.
    • Associate Researcher, University of California San Francisco || Adjunct Research Scientist, Nepal Applied Mathematics and Informatics Institute for research (NAAMII)
    • [email protected]