Experience

Graduate Research Assistant

• BigLab, Graduate Research Assistant (May 2023 - Present) in the Department of Computer Science, developing representation learning methods and LLM-based systems for structured and numerical data.
  • Develop representations for structured and numerical data that jointly encode numerical values, measurement units, attribute names, and numerical ranges, improving numerical reasoning and semantic matching over structured data.
  • Build LLM-based systems for extracting structured information from documents and generating bi-dimensional tables, including automated selection and optimization of extraction plans based on document and model characteristics.
  • Developed transformer-based models aligned with BERT configurations to create structurally aware composite embeddings for tables with complex structured data, outperforming state-of-the-art models by up to 28%.
  • Developed scalable contrastive-learning methods for identifying and classifying multi-level row and column headers in heterogeneous tables, outperforming both state-of-the-art baselines and LLM-based approaches on large-scale datasets.
  • Train and evaluate deep learning models and LLMs using multi-GPU distributed training on university and AWS infrastructure, applying parameter-efficient fine-tuning (LoRA/QLoRA) and retrieval-augmented generation.

Research Assistant

• Bioinformatics Lab, Florida State University (Summer 2021), Supervisor: Prof. Xian Mallory
  • Worked on Complex Structural Variant (SV) detection using long read DNA sequencing data. Utilized the union-find algorithm for clustering potential SVs from aligned long reads.

Graduate Teaching Assistant

• Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Department of Computer Science (Aug. 2021 - Present) for courses including Unix Tools (COP4342), Operating Systems (COP4610), Data Structures, and Algorithms (COP4530), Introduction to Data Science (CAP5768), and Advanced Data Science (CAP5769).
  • Lead recitation TA for Advanced Data Science (CAP5769), Spring 2024
  • Led laboratory and practice sessions, delivered review lectures, held weekly office hours, supervised student projects, and provided individualized technical guidance for sections of approximately 60 students.

Academic Service

• Program Committee Member, IEEE International Conference on Big Data (IEEE BigData 2026), Research Track
  • Reviewing original research submissions across Big Data systems, analytics, and applications. Phoenix, AZ, December 2026.
• Program Committee Member, IEEE BigData 2026, Industrial and Government Track
  • Reviewing submissions on applied Big Data solutions in industrial settings and on public and open data utilization in government.
• Reviewer, Context Beyond the Window Workshop, Conference on Language Modeling (COLM 2026)
  • Reviewed research on long-context modeling, memory, retrieval, and knowledge internalization in language models.
• Professional Memberships
  • Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI); Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL)

Mentoring

• Sai Ganesh Akula, M.S. in Data Science, Florida State University (2025)
  • Mentored on tabular embeddings for tables with multi-level headers and nested cells; co-authored EDBT 2025 paper.

Software Engineer

• Tekvortex Pvt. Ltd. Pulchowk, Lalitpur, Nepal (June 2020 - Dec.2020)
  • Enhanced existing software that assists clients in determining whether to migrate from on-premises servers to AWS Cloud by providing cluster suggestions and cost estimates. Improved cost accuracy by 5% by adding disk usage calculations. Fixed multiple production issues/bugs, reducing customer support tickets by 30% through collaborating with the Support Team.

Machine Learning Software Engineer

• E&T Nepal Pvt. Ltd, Lokanthali, Bhaktapur, Nepal (Jan. 2018 - Feb. 2020)
  • Developed automated 3D model recognition software for a major manufacturing part supplier in Japan, utilizing standard C++ library functions to reduce processing time by 10% and minimize memory consumption by 15%.
  • Built geometric feature recognition using SVM-based classifiers, integrating ACIS, Spatial, Tesseract, and Leptonica libraries.
  • Relocated on-site to Japan (Core Concept Technologies Inc.) for three months to work closely with clients, accelerating project completion by 10% through direct collaboration and iterative feedback.

Assistant Lecturer

• Tribhuvan University, IOE, Thapathali Campus, Nepal (May 2017 - Dec. 2017)
  • Collaborated with Professor to prepare lecture notes, grade coursework and held lab sessions for courses including Image Processing and Pattern Recognition (CT72504), and Data Mining (CT72502), serving a section of 48 undergraduate students.

Teaching Interests

• Artificial Intelligence; Machine Learning; Database Systems; Data Mining; Data Science; Natural Language Processing; Large Language Models; Data Structures and Algorithms.

Leadership and Outreach

• President, Nepalese Student Association, Florida State University (Aug. 2022 - Aug. 2023)
  • Led an organization of approximately 30 members, coordinating community events, student programs, and officer transitions. Supported prospective and newly arrived students with academic and university guidance.
• Core Member, Robotics and Automation Center, Thapathali Campus (June 2014 - Dec. 2016)
  • Conducted robotics and technology training workshops and led teams participating in national and international robotics competitions. Reached the final round of the International Robotic Challenge at Techfest, IIT Bombay (2015-2016), and placed second in the Minefield competition at KSHITIJ, IIT Kharagpur (2015).

Skills

• Programming languages
  • Python, C/C++, JavaScript, SQL
• AI & Machine Learning
  • PyTorch, TensorFlow, Transformers, LLM fine-tuning (LoRA/QLoRA), RAG, contrastive and representation learning
• Big Data & Systems
  • Spark, MongoDB, vector databases, AWS, Python (e.g. scikit-learn, numpy, pandas, matplotlib)