Hi,

My name is Harsh. Different people call me by different names; some say Bunny, some say Avi, but most people call me crazy!

I completed my Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from IIT BHU Varanasi. My stay and journey at Varanasi was one of the most beautiful experience I could ever have or gather in my lifetime! I started living in a place where people decide to die! Kashi :)

By profession, I am a researcher and an entrepreneur in making. I work in the field of Robotics and Machine Learning, trying to make machines intelligent, and contributing my teeny-tiny bit to the cognitive shift that seems to occur in the upcoming era. For my professional interests, have a look at my LinkedIn Profile.

Feel free to conatct me if you have anything in mind that you feel is worth sharing and can have a larger impact on the universe! One of my all time favourite quote is:

“Talent hits a target no one else can hit, however, a genius hits a target no one else can see!

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

-Arthur Schopenhauer and Steve Jobs

Cheers!

Research Interests!

I am keen on working on ideas that contribute significantly to the society and are innovative. Fields of interests, myriad. Presently Deep Learning (primarily Computer Vision, you have something more interesting, do tell me about it). Getting the content within the context is what fascinates me so much about DL. Just imagine since we were born we are being fed with so much of data around the world visualising every single thing that we intuitively learn so much! Can we do that with a machine?

Currently, I am working on Multi Modal localisation and NavCog along with Kris Kitani, Donghyun Yoo, and Cheiko Asakawa at Carnegie Mellon. The idea is to solve a pretty classical problem of computer vision, pertaining to localisation of a moving person in a dynamic environment, using recent advancements in Machine Learning.

In my college I used to run a small esoteric group called DeepLearningIsLife to promulgate DL. We used to work on some random experiments and tried developing a better understanding of deep learning Algorithms as a whole! Undergrad times were amazing and it would be incomplete without these students!

We used to work under the supervision of Dr. K.V. Srinivas.

Prior to that, I have worked at IISc under Prof. R. Venkatesh Babu and Australian Centre for Robotic Vision under Prof. Ian Reid. These two internships form the core of the reserach work that I continued doing at later stages!

Life to me!

Whenever I am free, I belive there is a different version of me altogether that’s less of a scientist and more of a philosopher!

My interests include: reading books and magazines, writing on Quora, making movies, writing scripts and reviews for films and stage plays, and how can I forget talking! I am also keen on pursuing Music and Dance (Can you please help me! :P). My passion for movie making lead me and my friend Avijit Thawani to make a Large Short Film Stopping by Woods in my undergrad. In the quest of venturing into movie making and stuff, we worked on some random videos on College Life for the Film and Media Council at IIT BHU. Do have a look! As I am interested in becoming a speaker at some later stage of my life, I keep giving small seminars and presentation at my schools and coachings! One of the first lectures that I had given during my school days was recorded by my principal :P Here is the link! My Journey!

In Banares I was trying to work on a social venture called Banares Dialogues along with Mr. Anupam Raghuvanshi, that concerns with the development of global youth dialogue. The focus was on Education System in India. We felt that somewhere down the line in the quest towards becoming successful we tend to lose our passion for developing life skills like creativity, communication and so on! Any suggestions in this regard, please feel free to mail, either Anupam Sir or me! :)

Harsh Agarwal