• ...In addition to his strong intellect, Akshay is incredibly hungry to learn. He’s one of the rare students who is happy to be given more to learn. His thesis work required knowledge of cutting edge computational photography methods, which he learned from the ground up, worked with for a year. Akshay is extremely motivated to succeed, a self-starter who communicates very well, has excellent work ethic and is very organized and detail oriented. I would jump at the chance to work with Akshay on any research project without hesitation. He is definitely an exceptional candidate who will hit the ground sprinting and make you glad that you selected him.

    Emmanuel Agu, Professor, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

    Akshay's Thesis Advisor

  • During my interaction with Akshay, I can state from experience he has a sharp mind with a predilection for constant learning. Akshay has a great grasp over complex concepts in the field of deep learning and computer vision. He has a strong hold over the fundamentals of the field and has taken efforts to gain an intuitive understanding of the same. In addition, he was able to implement and successfully train large neural networks to perform complex computer vision tasks like visual odometry.

    Riad Hammoud, Professor, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

    Akshay's Research Advisor

  • Smart, Exuberant, Inquisitive and devoted are some of the characteristics that come to my mind when I think about Akshay. I have worked closely with him for over a year on some challenging projects. Akshay not only ensured to give his 100% but also would carry everyone along with his cheerful attitude and make the tough work fun. He demonstrated the readiness to take new challenges head-on and also mastered the abstract concepts of new technologies and domain in a very short period of time. His ability to go deep into the concepts while keep it still simple for everyone to understand is a rare talent in itself. His flexibility and willingness to support his team members, along with his affable personality, made him the well-liked star of the group.

    Rajit Nair, Associate Director, Deloitte India

    Akshay's Manager at Deloitte

  • I had the privilege of working with AI straight out of his engineering college on his first job. AI was an incredibly assertive and hardworking chap who loved solving complex problems. I really enjoyed working with him and brainstorming technology solutions on some innovative projects involving complex Pharma R&D processes and other IT Strategy projects. He showed excellent analytical skills and was able to contribute positively. I am sure AI will have a great career ahead.

    Suyog Shah, Technology Advantage Expert at Digital BCG, India

    Akshay's Team Director at Deloitte

  • I worked with Akshay on a large scale robotics transformation project during his time in Deloitte. He proved himself to be extremely intelligent, proactive, and outcome driven individual. An independent and diligent engineer, Akshay led the engineering build and development of his work stream with great effectiveness. I can't wait to work with Akshay again in the future, and look forward to the amazing problems he will undoubtedly solve!

    Cameron Lau, Digital Expert, McKinsey & Co., UK

    Akshay's Manager at Deloitte, UK

Hey I'm Akshay!

I'm a deep learning researcher working on cutting edge deep learning applied to SPECT Imaging in the Radiology Dept. at UMass Medical School. I hold a Masters degree in Robotics from Worcester Polytechnic Institute where I worked on my thesis under Prof. Emmanuel Agu for developing a lower extremity wound diagnostics app. My work Involved studying and mitigating the effects of adverse lighting on segmentation of wound images using intrinsic image decomposition.

Additionally, I have also been fortunate to work on some more interesting projects like estimating the egomotion of a vehicle using recurrent convolutional neural networks under Prof. Riad Hammoud and creating 3D thermal models of indoor environments under Prof. Shichao Liu

In my parallel universe, I have been exploring the hills of New England, taoist meditation, solving the cube, karaoke singing, and devouring non-fiction.

Skills:

Languages: Modern C++, Python, Embedded C
Software/Libraries: Tensorflow, PyTorch, OpenCV, PyData, Weights&Biases, Flask, Slurm, HPC
Hardware: Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Depth and Thermal cameras
Core Competencies: CNNs, LSTMs, Conv-LSTMs, AEs, ML Deployment, Data Science

Contact Details

Akshay Iyer
Worcester, MA 01609
(508) 410-2937
akshay.iyerr@gmail.com abiyer@wpi.edu

Download Resume

Education

Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Masters in Robotics • May 2020 • GPA 4.0/4.0

Related Coursework: Thesis (Deep Learning) | Computer Vision | Artificial Intelligence

Funding/ Scholarships:
• Research Assistantship by WPI
• JN Tata Scholarship by The JN Tata Endowment for the Higher Education of Indians

Publications:
• “Characterizing the effects of adverse lighting on semantic segmentation of wound images and mitigation using a Deep Retinex Model”, Elsevier Medical Image Analysis, 2020 (In review) (Impact Factor 11.15)
• Reviewer – IEEE Internet of Things Journal (Impact Factor 9.93)

Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute

B.Tech in ECE • July 2015 • GPA 9.3/10 • Rank 2/74

Related Coursework: Digital Signal Processing | Probability and Stats | Data Structures and Algorithms

Funding/ Scholarships:
• Sir Dorabji Tata Scholarship for undergraduate studies

Publications:
• "RealNET – Internet of Things in everyday life using Raspberry Pi”, IRJET, 2017 (Impact Factor 7.53)

Work

Deep Learning Research Engineer

UMass Medical School • July 2020 - Present

Estimation of a surrogate signal for cardiac motion activity due to respiration:
• Designing a neural network from scratch in the less-ventured area of surrogate signal estimation for motion correction in SPECT imaging
• Performing extensive data analysis to guide experiments to select the optimal network and hyper-parameters

Estimation of attenuation-map from SPECT Emission data:
• Using GAN-based deep learning models to estimate attenuation map from SPECT emission data alone for Boston Children’s Hospital.
• This would eliminate the need for an additional CT scan reducing the exposure to harmful ionizing radiation to children

Research Assistant

Worcester Polytechnic Institute • July 2019 - May 2020

Characterizing and mitigating effects of adverse lighting on U-Net segmentation:
• Created the first large-scale dataset of 60k images of a wound moulage under varying lighting conditions and various cameras
• Carried out extensive data analysis and found low light conditions to cause maximum deterioration of UNet performance
• Enhanced the poor lighting separately using intrinsic images and encoder-decoder networks which improved segmentation by 300%

Deep Learning Summer Intern

SmartWands Group, WPI • May 2019 - Jul 2019

Image enhancement in adverse lighting:
• Worked on intrinsic decomposition of a single image, an ill-posed problem with high ambiguity and limited training data
• Performed extensive deep learning literature review on intrinsic image decomposition to counteract bad lighting in images
• Trained connected encoder-decoder networks on the ShapeNet dataset to predict reflectance, shape, lighting, and shading
• Used unsupervised reconstruction loss to use unlabeled data for training and generalize to unknown objects and lighting

Computer Vision Researcher

BOS Lab, WPI • Feb 2019 - Apr 2019

3D thermal modeling of indoor environments:
• Worked under Prof. Shichao Liu to build a 3D thermal map of indoor environments to detect thermal failures in buildings
• Performed depth calibration using Hermann grids and thermal calibration using heated gradient boards
• Performed cross-calibration of a trimodal setup of RGB, depth and thermal cameras
• Developed a new pipeline to create a 3D thermal map using PointCloudFusion
• The pipeline is able to generate 3D thermal maps just from a pair of images

RPA Developer/ Technology Consultant

Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP • July 2015 - June 2018

Robotic Process Automation for UBS, UK
• Automated a highly complex returns process for UBS, UK from end to end, programming in Automation Anywhere
• Worked with business to design the solution document, built code using Automation Anywhere, unit tested the solution and deployed it, resulting in 83% time savings

Designing India's first Pharma R&D Workbench
• Worked with CIO office of Sun Pharmaceuticals, India's largest pharma company, to design a company wide R&D Workbench
• Worked as the Design-BA for the project as well as was responsible in creating the entire URS document for the workbench

IT Modernization of the Central Bank of Philippines (BSP)
• Created the current state and target state technology architecture to modernize the tech stack at BSP
• Worked on revamping the application architecture and the IT Org Structure for the client

Achieved a fast track promotion at Deloitte (within 2 years vs average of 3-4 years) and rated in the top 5% of employees

Volunteer Experiences

Reviewer, IEEE IoT Journal
• On the review board of the IEEE IoT Journal peer reviewing latest paper submissions in the journal

Workshop Coordinator, Abhilasha Foundation
• Organized a workshop on basics of robotics for underprivileged children at Abhilasha Foundation at the Nehru Science Center, Mumbai as a part of the CSR event at Deloitte India

Managing Trustee, Smt. Chandra Iyer English School, Mumbai
• Serve as a trustee, overseeing the smooth operations of our family-run school - Smt. Chandra Iyer English School providing CBSE education at very low fees in the suburbs of Mumbai.

Skills

  • C++
  • Python
  • pytorch
  • Tensorflow
  • Numpy, Pandas, Matplotlib, OpenCV
  • Sagemaker
  • ROS
  • PCL

The air beneath my wings

  • Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

    Viktor E. Frankl

  • The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.

    Marcus Aurelius

  • The important thing about a problem is not its solution, but the strength we gain in finding the solution

    Seneca the Younger

Get In Touch.

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