Nikash Walia

I am a B.S.-M.S. student in Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign advised by Svetlana Lazebnik. My primary interests lie in Computer Vision, Reinforcement Learning, and kernel-based optimization. I am working on AI agents for better lightweight navigation.

I have interned with Karen Hayrapetyan in the NSX division of VMware and with Abon Chaudhuri at Walmart Labs. I have also worked with Hamed Valizadegan and Kamalika Das at NASA Ames Research Center's Intelligent Systems Division.

Currently, I am collaborating with Unnat Jain and Shivansh Patel for embodied-AI research. I am also a part of the Impact Research Group and the Center for Cognitive Computing Systems Research at UIUC under Professor Wen-Mei Hwu. Current collaborators include Vikram Sharma Mailthody.

CV | E-Mail | Github | LinkedIn

Publications and Projects

ExoMiner: A Highly Accurate and Explainable Deep Learning Classifier to Mine Exoplanets
NEW ExoMiner: A Highly Accurate and Explainable Deep Learning Classifier to Mine Exoplanets
Contributors- Hamed Valizadegan, Miguel Martinho, Laurent S. Wilkens, Jon M. Jenkins, Jeffrey Smith, Douglas A. Caldwell, Joseph D. Twicken, Pedro C. Gerum, Nikash Walia, Kaylie Hausknecht, Noa Y. Lubin, Stephen T. Bryson, Nikunj C. Oza
ApJ 2021
paper | project
Caterpillar IoT ML Challenge
Caterpillar IoT Machine Learning Analytics Challenge
Contributors- Nikash Walia, Samraj Moorjani, Aishani Dutta
Winners- HackIllinois 2020
project and code
MechMania 27
Mechmania 27 Engine
Contributors- Shaw Kagawa*, Nikash Walia*, Boyou Han, Sahil Patel, Nathaniel Cohen
Part of the annual Reflections|Projections student conference
website | project | code
Piano Man
Piano Player Simulator
Contributors- Nikash Walia*, Ben Schneider
project video | code
Schedule Generator
UIUC Schedule Generator
Contributors- Nikash Walia*, Samraj Moorjani*, Elena Zheng, Shresta Bangaru
project video | code
Film Festival Visualization
Film Festival Visualization
Contributors- Nikash Walia, Janani Radhurai, Pranav Burugula
project and code
Affiliations
                   
NASA Ames Research Center
June-August 2019
Walmart Labs
June-August 2020
VMware
May-August 2021
UIUC
2019-present
Intuit
2022-present
News
May 2022 Summer at Intuit TurboTax Express, Mountain View.
Nov 2021 Paper on Exoplanet Detection accepted in ApJ 2021.
Oct 2021 Accepted UIUC CS accelerated B.S.-M.S. offer. Begins August 2022.
May 2020 Summer at VMware NSX Intelligence, Palo Alto.
Feb 2021 Joined Professor Svetlana Lazebnik's research team as an undergraduate researcher.
Aug 2020 Joined the Center for Cognitive Computing Systems Resarch as an undergraduate researcher.
Jun 2020 Summer at Walmart Labs, Sunnyvale.
Jun 2019 Summer #2 at NASA Ames Research Center, Mountain View.
Jun 2018 Summer at NASA Ames Research Center, Mountain View.
Template credits: Shivansh