Hi! My name is Rupa.
I believe in technology that powers
the fight against climate change.
About Me
I hope to be a machine learning researcher tackling problems related to climate change and social good.
I am a fourth-year undergraduate at the California Institute of Technology, majoring in computer science. Primarily, my research focuses on applying computer vision to remote sensing data and aerial imagery in order to address climate issues such as conservation and renewable
energy. In the future, I aspire to work at the intersection between research and policy, designing and implementing research with a clearly defined impact. I am currently looking for opportunites in research and industry to develop the necessary skills to be impactful in this field.
Benthic Classification for Coral Restoration
Rupa Kurinchi-Vendhan, Drew Gray, Elijah Cole, and Pietro Perona
Developed a novel transformer-based neural network capable of multi-label benthic classification, taking processed drone imagery as input and identifying pixels as coral cover, rocks, rubble, sand, algae, etc. This model will be used to inform restoration efforts by providing actionable, specific evidence of where corals should be planted (in areas of higher relative live coral cover).
Estimating Solar Potential for Washington, D.C.
Edward Cronin, Ashley Fernando, Jarrett James, Rupa Kurinchi-Vendhan
Through NASA's DEVELOP National Program, we worked with the Langley Research Center (LaRC) and partnered with Washington DC's Department of Energy and Environment (DOEE) to create solar potential maps to inform solar panel installation decisions for the District.
WiSoSuper
Rupa Kurinchi-Vendhan, Björn Lütjens, Ritwik Gupta, Lucien Werner, Dava Newman, Steven Low
An accepted paper at the NeurIPS CCAI Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning 2021 Workshop. We modified existing deep learning-based super-resolution models, and applied them to satellite data to increase the resolution of wind speeds and solar irradiance fields for informing short-term, local energy planning. We published machine learning-ready wind and solar datasets.
Get in touch!
I love meeting new people, and you're no exception. Feel free shoot me an email at rkurinch@caltech.edu.