Hey there! I am currently working as an AI/ML Engineer at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, UC San Diego. I completed my Masters from UC San Diego in 2023, where I was a student researcher at the Existential Robotics Lab within the Contextual Robotics Institute working under the supervision of Prof. Nikolay Atanasov. Previously, I was an assistant researcher in the Intelligent Vision Research Team at Hitachi R&D Group in Japan, where I was advised by Dr. Katsuyuki Nakamura. My research interests are in machine learning, reinforcement learning, computer vision, and robotics.

Prior to this, I graduated from IIT Bombay, earning B.Tech in Electrical Engineering with Minor in Computer Science, and received Undergraduate Research Award 2019. I have also interned at Samsung R&D Institute (Summer 2018).

Email: sazim@ucsd.edu


I am actively looking for internship / full-time positions in industry. If you think I may be a good fit, feel free to reach out to me!

Research Interests

I am broadly interested in the field of machine learning, computer vision, and robot learning, which arises from my fascination with discovering similarities between human learning and artificial intelligence. As a remarkable product of evolution, humans can serve as a blueprint for the generalization and adaptation of neural agents. My research aims to develop AI algorithms that can be seamlessly implemented into real-world systems, enabling them to learn from human demonstrations and advance through self-supervised learning and curiosity. In my view, the future of AI lies in the development of flexible systems that require minimal supervision and have the ability to learn continuously throughout their lifespan.

Research Projects
Robotic Manipulation using Adversarial Imitation Learning
Saqib Azim, Nikolay Atanasov
Visual Localization in Dynamic Environments with Targeted Inference SLAM
Saqib Azim, Takumi Nito, Katsuyuki Nakamura
Japan Patent Application Filed in Aug 2021 (pending)
report / presentation
Near Real-Time WildFire Damage Assessment using Aerial Thermal Imagery and Deep Learning
Saqib Azim, Mai Nguyen, Daniel Crawl, Jessica Block, Rawaf Al Rawaf, Francesca Hart, Mark Campbell, Robert Scott, Ilkay Altintas
Accepted to 2024 IEEE International Conference on Big Data
Indoor Distance Estimation using LSTMs over WLAN Network
Pranav Sankhe, Saqib Azim, Sachin Goyal, Tanya Choudhary, Kumar Appaiah, Sukumar Srikant
IEEE 16th Workshop on Positioning, Navigation and Communications (WPNC), 2019
Indian Patent No. 467255, Awarded in November 2023
abstract / arXiv / paper / presentation
LPS
Multiagent Pursuer-Evader Optimal Trajectory Estimation
Advisor: Prof. Debraj Chakraborty
abstract / thesis / presentation
LPS
3D Handwritten Text Recognition using Smartwatch
Machine Learning Intern at Samsung R&D Institute advised by Dr. Shankar Venkatesan
summary
Miscellaneous Projects
SpeechEnhancement
Survey of Autoregressive Models for Image and Video Generation
Saqib Azim, Mehul Arora, Narayanan Ranganatha, Mahesh Kumar
abstract / report
SpeechEnhancement
Speech Enhancement using Wavelet-based Convolutional-Recurrent Network
Parthasarathi Kumar, Saqib Azim
abstract / report / presentation
Semantic Pose Estimation
Semantic Temporal Constrained Pose Estimation using Structure-from-Motion
Narayanan Ranganatha, Saqib Azim, Mehul Arora, Mahesh Kumar
abstract / report
SpeechEnhancement
Particle-Filter SLAM and 2D Texture Mapping for Autonomous Navigation
Saqib Azim
abstract / report
CartPole LunarLander
Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) PyTorch Implementation
abstract / code
GPT2 PyTorch
GPT-2 Implementation in PyTorch
abstract / code
Hazardous Activity Detection Wallpaper
Hazardous Activity Detection in Workplaces using Computer Vision
Saqib Azim, Takumi Nito, Tomokazu Murakami
Accepted at Hitachi Annual Research Symposium 2020
SpeechEnhancement
Adversarial Robustness Analysis of Deep Learning Models
Saqib Azim, Lily Weng
summary
EDL
TV Audience Measurement Challenge
Saqib Azim, Pranav Sankhe, Sachin Goyal, Sanyam Khandelwal, Tanmay Patil
Bronze Medal (3rd / 23 teams) at the Inter-IIT Technical Meet 2018
summary / code / presentation
EDL
Zero-Shot Learning for Object Recognition
Advisor: Prof. Subhasis Chaudhuri
summary / code
EDL
Photoplethysmogram (PPG) Signal Acquisition Module
Saqib Azim, Pranav Sankhe, Ritik Madan
abstract / report
Teaching and Mentoring Experience
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Graduate Teaching Assistant, UC San Diego

[1] DSC 140A - Probabilistic Modeling and Machine Learning (Spring 2023) by Prof. Berk Ustun

[2] CSE 166 - Image Processing (Winter 2023) by Prof. Ben Ochoa

[3] ECE 225A - Probability and Statistics for Data Science (Fall 2022) by Prof. Alon Orlitsky

[4] ECE 109 - Engineering Probability and Statistics (Spring 2022) by Prof. Alon Orlitsky

[5] ECE 101 - Linear Signals and Systems (Winter 2022) by Prof. Saharnaz Baghdadchi

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Teaching Assistant, IIT Bombay
[1] EE 210 - Signals and Systems (Spring 2019) by Prof. J.K. Nair
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Teaching Volunteer, National Service Scheme, IIT Bombay

Taught Science and Mathematics to underprivileged students under Education Outreach Program during 2015 - 16

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Mentor, Summer of Science (2019, 2020), IIT Bombay

Guided undergraduate and graduate students to develop and successfully complete projects in the areas of Machine Learning, Computer Vision, and Image Processing.

Other Contributions
Member, Autonomous Car Team @ IIT Bombay
summary / video
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Kivy, KivEnt (open-source platforms for Python native UI development)

Introduced several new features, worked on map integration for KivEnt game engine interfaces, resolved multiple software bugs and issues.