Samveed Desai

I am a final year undergraduate student at IIT Dharwad majoring in the area of Electrical Engineering.

I am currently working with my advisor Prof Bharath B N in the area of developing algorithms in the area for Federated Learning. I am broadly interested in the area of Machine Learning and Robotics.

Right from detailed technical blogs to interesting autobiographies, I love to read in my free time.

Email • Resume • GitHub • LinkedIn • Twitter

Indian Institute of Technology Dharwad
B.Tech in Electrical Engineering, CPI: 9.36 (2016-2020)

Pace Junior Science College Borivali, Mumbai
High School, Grade: 93.3%    (State Board, 2014-2016)

Cambridge School, Mumbai
High School, Grade: 96.2%     (ICSE Board, 2000-2014)

Laboratory Teaching Assistant, IIT Dharwad (January 2020-Present)
Working as a Teaching Assistant for the Digital Systems Lab course

Project Trainee, Nasdaq, Bangalore (June - September, 2019)
Developed a production ready, standalone iOS Message Extension to get real time quotes, news and other market analysis
Designed the layout for the new Nasdaq iOS Application which would integrate with the iMessage extension and thus allow for sharing stock related information with other people.

Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Intern, Miko, Mumbai (March - May, 2019)
Developed and deployed a Convolutional Neural Network based Face Detection system on a resource constrained, embedded platform (Miko 2 robot).

Summer Intern, IIT Bombay (May - July, 2017)
Designed a mechanical gripper and holder, which was attached in the PackBot robot, which was presented at the Military Expo 2017.
Developed mechanisms to allow for a spider robot to climb vertical surfaces.
Analysed and tested the body of a UAV, by simulating it through various stress and strain conditions

I am broadly interested in the area of Machine Learning, mainly Reinforcement Learning and its applications in the area of Robotics and Biotechnology. I love to read and analyze research papers and further, implement them in code to see tits real effect

I have a strong inclination to Computer Vision as well as Federated Learning. Here is a list of some of my research projects:

Image Compression using Neural Networks
[report][data]

Guide: Dr Rajiv Soundararajan

Implemented Image Compression on CIFAR-100 datasets using various Neural Network based models including Generative Adversarial Networkss(GAN's), Recurrent Neural Networks and finally used Convolutional AutoEncoder(CAE) to compare results with JPEG compression

Federated Multitask Learning (Ongoing)
[initial report]

Guide: Dr Bharath B.N

Developing a Federated Learning algorithm by utilizing the concept of calculating discrepancy in a distributed fashion so that we can utilize the information from other clients to update the model weights of the current client. Extending the work to personalize content w.r.t users

WiFi Sensing of the Environment
[Poster][Report]

Guide: Dr Bharath B.N

Developed mechanisms to detect vital health metrics such as heart rate and breathing rate among individuals in a non-contact, non-invasive manner

Department Rank 1 and Institute Rank 3
Top Academic performance in my department and in the top 3% of my batch for the last 4 years consecutively.

2^nd place, Inter IIT Technical Meet, 2018
Led a team of 10 to bag the 2^nd place among 23 IIT's who participated in the BeTiC Medical Innovation Challenge
Designed and developed a glove, with vibration motors, as a solution to reduce the tremors in Parkinson's patients

5^th place, Inter IIT Technical Meet, 2017
Led a team of 8 to bag the 5^th place among 13 IIT's who participated in the Warehouse Inventory Check Challenge, after participating for the first time
Designed and built an autonomous hexacopter from scratch, which used Computer Vision based techniques to follow a line and detect barcodes and QR codes

6^th place, TCS IT Wiz Quiz, 2018
Among the 6 top participants from 200+ students who attended the TCS IT Wiz Competition, Regional round

Ramanujan Scholarship, Junior Maths Olympiad, 2012
Among the few selected students who bagged the scholarship across the state

General Secretary Technical Affairs, 2017-19
Elected as the first General Secretary, Technical Affairs of the institute. Initiated technical competitions and discussions to engage like-minded people and build cool things

Insitute Robotics Secretary, 2016-19
Founded the SHiFT Lab( Student's Hub for Innovative and Futuristic Technology) to allow robotics enthusiasts to build machines

Student Mentor Coordinator, 2017-19
Elected among the 3 students out of our batch, to lead a team of 18 student mentors and help students cope with their academic as well as non-academic issues

Department Class Representative, 2016-18
Elected to interact with the faculty and find solutions to the concerns of students in the department

Event Coordinator, Parsec, IIT Dharwad, 2020
Organized a robotics competition "Synergia" at the annual Technical Fest of IIT Dharwad. Was also the Sponsorship and Outreach Co-cordinator

Indian Youth Delegation to China, 2018
Selected among the top 200 students in the country, by the government of India, for a cultural exchange program to China

Student Leadership Conclave(SLC), IIT Gandhinagar, 2018
Attended the annual SLC meet to discuss about the various problems which students at engineering institions face, with fellow IIT delegates and come up with effective solutions for the same

Indian Model United Nations, 2013
Represented the country of Lebanon, on the Disarmament and International Security front

Physics Laboratory Teaching Assistant, 2016
One of the 6 students, who assisted fellow students with their experiments in the Physics lab

Workshop on Arduino and it's use cases, 2016
Attended the workshop on how to get started with Arduino and build simple tools out of it, at IIIT Dharwad

Acive Citizen Contest, 2012
Bagged the 1^st prize at the annual competition held at Podar International School Mumbai, for the being involved in distributing extra unused accessories to underprivileged children

Reading: A bookworm in this aspect, I love to read anything interesting right from the biology of the brain to life-changing autobiographies. Even till this date, I continue to read all sorts of comics with my favorite being Tinkle and Amar Chitra Katha :) Here's some of the books which I am reading currently:

Writing: I have always had the desire to express myself openly. Haven't caught up on this in quite some time since this but am gearing up to once again get out there and set the ball rolling.