About me

I'm a computer science master's student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where I work with Dr. Neil Gaikwad in the Society-Centered AI Lab on computer vision and human-AI value alignment. Before Chapel Hill, I did my undergrad at UNC Charlotte, where I got hooked on research early, analyzing job traces from large-scale computing clusters in the High-Performance Computing Lab with Dr. Dong Dai, and building efficient video understanding models in the Machine Learning Lab with Dr. Srijan Das.

That work has grown into publications at CVPR 2026, npj Computational Materials, JSSPP'24, and IPDPS'24. Outside the lab, I teach as a TA for DATA 120: Ethics of Data Science and AI, and I'm usually building something on the side, lately open-source developer tools and on-device AI apps. What drives all of it is simple: I like taking ideas out of papers and turning them into things people can actually use.

Peer Reviewed Selected Publications

  • MS-Temba: Multi-Scale Temporal Mamba for Efficient Temporal Action Detection
    Arkaprava Sinha, Monish Soundar Raj, Pu Wang, Ahmed Helmy, Srijan Das
    Published at CVPR 2026.

    View Paper Project / GitHub

  • AI-Assisted Rapid Crystal Structure Generation Towards a Target Local Environment
    Osman Goni Ridwan, Sylvain Pitié, Monish Soundar Raj, Dong Dai, Gilles Frapper, Hongfei Xue, Qiang Zhu
    Published at npj Computational Materials, 2026.

    View Paper

  • An Empirical Study of Machine Learning-based Synthetic Job Trace Generation Methods.
    Monish Soundar Raj, Thomas MacDougall, Di Zhang, and Dong Dai
    Published at 27th JSSPP’24 (Job Scheduling Strategies for Parallel Processing), 2024.

    View Paper GitHub Repository

  • Cross-System Analysis of Job Characterization and Scheduling in Large-Scale Computing Clusters.
    Di Zhang, Monish Soundar Raj, Bing Xie, Sheng Di, Dong Dai
    Published at 38th IPDPS'24 (IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium), 2024.
    Joint work by researchers from UNC Charlotte, Microsoft, and Argonne National Laboratory.

    View Paper Web App GitHub Repository

News

  • [Feb. 2026] 1 Paper - MS-Temba: Multi-Scale Temporal Mamba for Efficient Temporal Action Detection accepted to CVPR 2026, Website.

  • [Aug. 2025] Joined the Society-Centered AI Lab (SAIL) at UNC Chapel Hill, working with Dr. Neil Gaikwad on Human-AI Value Alignment and Computer Vision research.

  • [Jun. 2025] 1 Poster - Crystal Structure Prediction with Deep Learning Models Using Space Group Symmetry presented at Gordon Research Conference.

  • [Jan. 2025] Started working as a Teaching Assistant for DATA 120: Ethics of Data Science and AI at UNC Chapel Hill.

  • [Jan. 2025] 1 Paper - MS-Temba: Multi-Scale Temporal Mamba for Efficient Temporal Action Detection is out, Check Here.

  • [Dec. 2024] 🎉 Excited to share that I made the Chancellor's List for Fall 2024!

Research Posters

  • Crystal Structure Prediction with Deep Learning Models Using Space Group Symmetry
    Osman Goni Ridwan, Monish Soundar Raj, Md Shah Nawaz Arafin, Dong Dai, Qiang Zhu
    Presented at Research at High Pressure Gordon Research Conference.
    📅 This work will be publicly released after the main publication is finalized.

  • Enhancing HPC Job Scheduling with Synthetic Data Generation for RL-Based Schedulers
    Monish Soundar Raj, Dong Dai
    Presented at Undergraduate Research Summer Research Symposium.

    View Poster

Mentoring Activities

Awards

  • TCPP Travel Grant Award $700
    To attend and present at IPDPS'24, San Francisco, CA..

  • Office of Undergrad Research Travel Grant Award $500
    For travel expenses to attend IPDPS'24, San Francisco, CA

Charlotte

Resume

Experience

  1. Graduate Research Assistant - Society-Centered AI Lab (SAIL)

    Aug 2025 - Present
    • Working with Dr. Neil Gaikwad on Human-AI Value Alignment and Computer Vision research.

  2. Graduate Teaching Assistant - DATA 120: Ethics of AI and Societal Decision Making

    Aug 2025 - Present
    • TA for DATA 120, working with Dr. Hsun-Ta Hsu and Dr. Justin Sola, supporting 100+ students exploring the ethical dimensions of AI systems and data-driven decision making.
    • Design and lead interactive workshops on AI ethics, facilitating discussions on algorithmic fairness, bias mitigation, and responsible AI deployment in high-stakes domains.
    • Grade assignments and provide substantive feedback on student analyses of ethical case studies involving AI in healthcare, criminal justice, and social systems.

  3. Research Assistant - Charlotte Machine Learning Lab

    Aug 2024 - May 2025
    • Worked on computer vision and robotics research under Dr. Srijan Das.
    • Vision-Language-Action robotics: deployed a UR5e robotic arm with ROS 2, Real-Time Data Exchange integration, and a camera calibration pipeline for real-time visual perception, then implemented a vision-to-action pipeline using the LLaRA model for natural language-driven manipulation.
    • MS-Temba (second author, CVPR 2026): developed the CLIP feature extraction pipeline processing 12,000+ videos and 16M+ frames, and optimized baseline models for a 24% accuracy improvement on the Toyota Smarthome dataset.

  4. Research Assistant - High Performance Computing and Systems Lab

    Aug 2023 - May 2025
    • JSSPP'24 (first author): led "An Empirical Study of Machine Learning-based Synthetic Job Trace Generation Methods", integrating five generative models (GAN, CTGAN, TVAE, Gaussian Copula, Copula GAN) and demonstrating the superiority of ML models over statistical methods for high-fidelity trace generation.
    • IPDPS'24 (second author): contributed to "Cross-System Analysis of Job Characterization and Scheduling in Large-Scale Computing Clusters", analyzing job traces from the Theta, Supercloud, and ThetaGPU clusters for scheduling optimization.

  5. Web Developer - High Performance Computing and Systems Lab

    Jun 2023 - Aug 2023
    • Developed a web application visualizing 20+ job trace cluster characteristics, processing 1 million+ job log rows in real time.
    • Built with Python, Streamlit, Pandas, and NumPy.
    View Project: Lumos-Job-Traces

Education

  1. Master of Science in Computer Science

    Currently pursuing my master's degree at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. My coursework and research focus on computer vision, machine learning, human-AI alignment, and ethical AI systems. Working on cutting-edge research in society-centered artificial intelligence.

  2. Bachelor of Science in Computer Science

    Completed my bachelor's degree at the University of North Carolina - Charlotte with Chancellor's List honors. My coursework and research focused on leveraging advanced programming tools, artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, and machine learning for data analysis and computational model development.

Technologies & Tools

Python Python
TypeScript TypeScript
JavaScript JavaScript
Java Java
C C
HTML HTML
CSS CSS
Linux Linux
Windows Windows
React React
Node.js Node.js
Express.js Express.js
Next.js Next.js
Python Python
TypeScript TypeScript
JavaScript JavaScript
Java Java
C C
HTML HTML
CSS CSS
Linux Linux
Windows Windows
React React
Node.js Node.js
Express.js Express.js
Next.js Next.js
Flask Flask
Streamlit Streamlit
MongoDB MongoDB
Firebase Firebase
NumPy NumPy
pandas pandas
Matplotlib Matplotlib
Heroku Heroku
AWS AWS
Flask Flask
Streamlit Streamlit
MongoDB MongoDB
Firebase Firebase
NumPy NumPy
pandas pandas
Matplotlib Matplotlib
Heroku Heroku
AWS AWS
View Full CV (Being Cooked)

Side Projects

  • AFDP: Loop Detection with Reflection Prompts for LLM Web Agents

    AFDP: LLM Web Agents

    Research Paper · COMP 790, UNC Chapel Hill

    Led a three-person research team building AFDP, a web-agent system pairing adaptive DOM pruning with reflection-based loop recovery. Our 168-task WebArena ablation found that loop recovery, not pruning, is what drives performance, lifting task success by 14.9 points.

    Python Playwright Azure OpenAI Docker WebArena
    Read Paper
  • chatcn

    chatcn

    Open-Source Chat UI Components for React

    79 7

    Beautiful, open-source chat UI components for React: message bubbles, threads, reactions, drag-and-drop file upload, voice recording, and link previews across 4 themes and 5 layouts. Installs straight into any project through the shadcn CLI.

    TypeScript React shadcn/ui Tailwind CSS
    Code Live Demo
  • ModelSweep

    ModelSweep

    Local LLM Evaluation Workbench

    20 4

    Think "Postman for local LLM evaluation": a GUI-first workbench for models running on Ollama. Build test suites, stream evaluations across models, execute generated code in isolated Docker sandboxes, score with cloud judges and round-robin peer voting, and compare Elo ratings on interactive dashboards.

    TypeScript Next.js SQLite Docker Ollama
    Code
  • Priv AI (localLLM)

    Priv AI (localLLM)

    On-Device AI · iOS App on the App Store

    14 1 1,000+ downloads

    A privacy-first iOS app that runs LLMs entirely on-device via llama.cpp. Chat offline with models from 360M to 7B parameters, get AI health coaching from HealthKit data, and track finances from PDF statements using on-device OCR. No cloud, no accounts, no tracking.

    Swift SwiftUI llama.cpp HealthKit Ollama
    Code App Store
  • GenDM

    GenDM

    Synthetic Data Generation and Management Application

    This tool is a powerful platform for generating and managing synthetic data with advanced models and metrics to ensure data quality. Its user-friendly interface simplifies dataset handling, making it ideal for research and development.

    TypeScript Python React PyTorch ExpressJS MongoDB AWS
    Code (Soon) View
  • DiffuseCampus

    DiffuseCampus

    AI Image Generation

    An innovative image generation platform utilizing fine-tuned Stable Diffusion XL architectures to create detailed, campus-specific imagery. Tailored for marketing materials, event posters, and promotional content, it delivers visuals uniquely reflective of the UNCC campus.

    Python PyTorch LoRA Diffusers Stable Diffusion HuggingFace Gradio
    Generated Img View
  • Lumos Job Trace

    Lumos Job Trace

    Data Visualization Platform

    A comprehensive web application for visualizing and analyzing job trace cluster characteristics in high-performance computing environments.

    Python Streamlit Matplotlib Pandas Numpy Seaborn
    Code View
  • Goman Project

    The Goman Project

    Digital History Platform

    A digital archive and educational platform showcasing the Haitian Revolution, featuring interactive content and historical documentation.

    JavaScript HTML5 CSS3 Omeka-S
    View

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