John M. Hart

Principal Research Engineer

Principal Investigator on interdisciplinary research projects and the Manager of the Computer Vision and Robotics Laboratory (CVRL) in the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. Conduct research with Professor Ahuja and the Civil and Environmental Engineering department on the design and development of Automated Visual Inspection systems and with the College of Agriculture, Consumer and Environmental Sciences on the design and development of Information Technology and Sensor System projects. Other research also involves the development of Next Generation Cameras for capturing wide field-of-view images of scenes.

Xiaodan Hu

Graduate Student

I’m a Ph.D. candidate under the supervision of Prof. Narendra Ahuja, specializing in computer vision and multimodal deep learning. I’m currently working on multimodal video understanding and video generation, with a focus on the domain of dances. Also, I’m in collaboration with AIFARMS project, developing AI technologies to enhance the performance of animals. Before joining CVRL, I was a master student of the Vision and Image Processing Lab of University of Waterloo under the guidance of Prof. Paul Fieguth and working closely with Prof. Alexander Wong.

Shubhang Bhatnagar

Graduate Student

I am a third-year PhD student advised by Prof. Narendra Ahuja at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). My research broadly focuses on developing better ML algorithms to address challenges in computer vision, particularly for real-world applications. Currently, my work focuses on semantic understanding and retrieval of images and videos, diffusion models, and representation learning. I completed my B.Tech and M.Tech in Electrical Engineering at IIT Bombay, graduating with the Institute Silver Medal. I am always open to collaborations and discussion.

Hao Zhang

Graduate Student

I am currently a second-year PhD student in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). My research interests encompass Dynamic 3D Reconstruction/Generation, Animation & Rigging, Out-of-distribution Segmentation, and Domain Adaptation. I’m open to discussions and collaborations, so feel free to reach out.

Samyak Rawlekar

Graduate Student

Hello, I’m Samyak, a first-year PhD student in the Computer Vision and Robotics Laboratory at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, advised by Prof. Narendra Ahuja. My research focuses on large multi-modal (vision-language) models for multi-task learning in Computer Vision.

I obtained my Masters in Computer Engineering from New York University, supervised by Prof. Yao Wang, Prof. Cem Deniz, and Prof. Sumit Chopra, and a B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from IIT Dharwad

Kamila Abdiyeva

Graduate Student

My main passions are research and challenging myself to extend my boundaries every day. My current area of research is neural network understanding and optimization for computer vision tasks. Before joining CVRL, I received my bachelor’s in one of the coldest capitals of the world (Nazarbayev University, Astana, Kazakhstan) and my master’s in the country of endless summer (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore), focusing on techniques for enhancing computation and understanding of neural networks. In the past, I have also conducted research in areas such as neural cryptography, audio bandwidth extension, audio accent transfer, and game development.

Shubham Kumar

Graduate Student

I’m a first-year PhD student passionate about understanding the semantics represented in computer vision models. My work lies in explainable AI, and I seek to uncover what visual concepts typically inform model decisions at different layers of the network. I hope to make explanations for users and researchers that are holistic, human-understandable, and faithful to the model.

I completed by BS from UCSD, where I was fortunate to research with Dr. Truong Nguyen and Dr. Pamela Cosman. Reach out to connect!

Katie Bolan

Graduate Student

I am a physics PhD student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. My research focuses on using computer vision to analyze dance videos and provide feedback to the dancer(s). However, my academic interests also span other areas of math and physics, including dynamic and interacting systems and biophysics. I also enjoy finding and exploring connections between art and science.