For years, Avinash Madasu has shared his insights and expertise with the world; he’s worked as a senior engineer and research scientist on some of the biggest challenges in the technology industry, but none of these contributions happened overnight. To him, his professional path has had four separate phases: early research in his undergraduate studies, industry exposure at Samsung, advanced research at IIT Patna, and most recently, his contributions at UNC Chapel Hill. These steps may seem unconnected in some ways, however each is a building block that required previous experiences to achieve success. In order to understand the gravity of Avinash’s work, it’s important to examine his contributions within each phase.
In his home country of India, Avinash began studying computer science at the National Institute of Technology Tiruchirappalli in 2014. Here, his foundation as a researcher began to form and he sparked an interest in artificial intelligence. Excited by the future of the field and fascinated about how much it would grow and change in the coming years, Avinash began working with his university professors to get as much exposure to AI as possible. Under Dr. Sivasankar, Avinash conducted low resource sentiment analysis and built hybrid recommender systems. He explored the possibility of combining text reviews with numerical ratings for hybrid recommender systems, resulting in more sophisticated consumer-grade products. When he finished his undergraduate studies in 2018, he felt prepared to jump into a major role at Samsung.
Not many new graduates can step into a senior software engineer role and succeed, but Avinash was on a team dedicated to improving Bixby, Samsung’s digital assistant program embedded in the company’s products. He helped Bixby process and utilize detailed data from its users while upholding strict data security requirements and built a model which identifies utterance executed in an incorrect application. Working with cutting-edge AI technologies to improve Bixby solidified the skills he learned during his undergraduate studies and gave him a new perspective regarding the gravity of technology and its ability to impact the lives of millions of people.
Broadening his research skills at IIT Patna, Avinash worked on multi-modal dialogue systems that processed both text and images. Navigating the entirety of the development process – including the design, build, and testing phases – Avinash proposed an end-to-end model that could identify slots without external slot labels. His work under Professor Asif Eqbal is currently being reviewed by the TOMM Journal and is likely to be published.
Most recently, Avinash headed back to the classroom to obtain a master’s degree in computer science. Making his way to the United States and studying at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill has been a challenging but rewarding phase of his professional journey. He has been able to see some of his most refined work take shape, and his impact has been bigger than he ever could have imagined. He has worked on research projects under two different professors and will finish his program in the summer of 2023.
Already a renowned researcher in the artificial intelligence field, Avinash has multiple journal publications, has been awarded prestigious research awards, and is recognized by his peers as a leader in the industry. He’s dedicated to continuously growing and learning and encourages those around him to do the same. Avinash knows the power that AI can and will have on the world, and he doesn’t take his role as a steward of the technology lightly. With a number of use cases in mind and a constant loop of ideas playing in his head, Avinash’s fifth phase of his professional career is shaping up to be the most impressive yet.
This article was written in cooperation with Craig Lebrau