Deepthi Hegde
National Institute of Technology Karnataka, India
Human Sensing Lab, The Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University

I am a Computer Science undergraduate from The National Institute of Technology, Karnataka, India. I will be joining New York University as a masters in Computer Science student this fall.
My research interests lie at the intersection of core machine learning, computer vision and cognition. I am currently working with the Human Sensing Lab at Carnegie Mellon University as a Robotics Institute Summer Scholar. My research this summer involves estimating the affective state (emotion) of humans using physiological signals such as heart rate, blood pressure, temperature. The motivation behind the project is to automate customer feedback in the entertainment industry. Another promising application lies in understanding the psychology of people for therapeutic purposes. I am generously supported by FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry) for my work.
I was a Robotics Institute Summer Scholar last year as well. My research was funded by DARPA and focused on developing an algorithm to cluster high dimensional data with low dimensional structures. The immediate applications of the algorithm that we explored spanned detection of human trafficking and evaluation of symptoms on medical data.
Most of my research so far has been directed towards employing machine learning techniques to improve the quality of human life. My passion for advancing social welfare and healthcare through scientific research can in fact be traced back to my undergrad days when I had the opportunity to intern with Practo, a healthcare start-up in India. I developed a drug prediction system to aid doctors with patient prescriptions, especially under a rural setting.
I believe, the biggest challenge today lies in enabling machines to think like humans. I am driven to induce emotional intelligence in computers and transform the state of the art in various fields including healthcare and entertainment.

LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/deepthi-hegde-684312100/