CV

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.

Education

  • 2024 - 2029*
    Ph.D. in Computer Science
    Georgia State University
    Advisor: Yi Ding, Ph.D.
    • Deep learning projects on 2D/3D computer vision and large language models (LLMs), funded by the US Department of Defense (DoD).
    • Research in resource-friendly machine learning.
  • 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.

Experience

  • 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.

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]