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General Information

Full Name Tushar Nayak
Email tusharnayak128@gmail.com
Alumni Email tusharn@alumni.cmu.edu
Website https://tushar-nayak.github.io/
Location Chicago, Illinois

Education

  • 2024-2026
    Master of Science, Biomedical Engineering, Research Track
    Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
    • Computational focus. Completed May 2026.
    • {"Relevant coursework"=>"Computer Vision, Visual Learning and Recognition, Image-Based Computational Modelling and Analysis, Learning for 3D Vision, Clinical Translations of AI."}
  • 2019-2023
    Bachelor of Technology
    Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal, India
    • Major in Biomedical Engineering, minor in Data Science.
    • {"Relevant coursework"=>"Pattern Recognition, Digital Image Processing, Digital Signal Processing, Signals and Systems, Statistical Inference and Machine Learning."}

Experience

  • 2026-present
    Staff Scientist, Surgical Biomechanics Lab
    University of Chicago
    • Patient-specific vascular geometry and multiphysics modeling for geometric deep learning based predictive modeling.
    • Lead computer vision and deep learning researcher under Dr. Luka Pocivavsek, investigating relationships between integrated baseline Gaussian curvature, longitudinal curvature-adaptive patch-wise surface-area growth, and CFD-derived pressure and velocity fields.
    • Building CT/CTA-to-3D vascular modeling pipelines spanning segmentation, surface reconstruction, mesh processing, and anatomical correspondence, with extension toward biomechanical stress analysis.
  • 2026-present
    Research Collaborator, Surreality Lab
    University of Pittsburgh
    • Enhanced intraoperative speech analysis for awake craniotomy (TRACER).
    • Contributing to an automated operating-room speech pipeline combining speaker attribution, word-onset localization, overlap detection, and neural source separation.
    • Evaluating overlap detection and selective source separation, auditing failure modes and robustness of diarization, temporal localization, and separation components.
  • 2024-2026
    Graduate Student Researcher, Computational Engineering and Robotics Lab
    Carnegie Mellon University
    • Real-time 3D vascular deformation estimation from monocular fluoroscopy for endovascular robotic surgery.
    • Developed FluoroGRID, a multimodal deep learning framework combining fluoroscopic input with preoperative vascular geometry, sparse control points, and acquisition metadata to predict 3D deformation.
    • Designed a quad-encoder architecture fusing image features, graph representations, sampled mesh geometry, and camera metadata with differentiable projection and physics-based geometric regularizers.
    • Built a synthetic data pipeline generating over 370,000 paired 3D-2D training examples; achieved real-time inference with sub-millimeter reconstruction precision. Presented initial results at the ELSR workshop, IROS 2026.
  • 2025
    Research Assistant, The ∀ Lab and Image Science Lab
    Carnegie Mellon University
    • Longitudinal glioblastoma evolution and MRI-based forecasting.
    • Built an Attention U-Net with temporal embeddings and Neural ODE dynamics for continuous-time glioblastoma forecasting from longitudinal multimodal MRI.
    • Reduced prediction MSE by 6.7% versus a persistence baseline and relative FLAIR-volume error by 98%; presented at the 2025 CMU Biomedical Engineering Forum.
  • 2025-2026
    Graduate Teaching Assistant
    Carnegie Mellon University
    • Supported graduate courses in Applied Deep Learning, Fundamentals of Computational Biomedical Engineering, Computer Vision for Engineers, and Machine Learning in Experimental Biomedical Engineering Research.

Selected Research Projects

  • 2025-2026
    Sparse-View Cardiac Reconstruction with Neural Implicit Representations
    • Coordinate-based neural implicit reconstruction completing dense 3D left-ventricular geometry from three sparse 2D echocardiography sections, scored only on unobserved voxels, achieving 0.936 Dice and 0.880 IoU on MITEA.
    • Matched comparison against an explicit Gaussian occupancy field under identical observations (0.902 Dice, 0.821 IoU), with mesh and topology diagnostics distinguishing genuine shape error from label artifacts.
  • 2026-present
    Deformable 3D Reconstruction of Live Endoscopic Surgical Scenes
    • Prototyping deformable 3D Gaussian Splatting for dynamic monocular endoscopic reconstruction with depth/pose initialization, differentiable rendering, and deformation fields.
    • Exploring semantic feature alignment for open-vocabulary querying of reconstructed surgical scenes.
  • 2026
    Geometric Multi-View Breast Cancer Detection
    • Geometric alignment and dual-view correspondence framework for paired CC/MLO mammography, integrating lesion segmentation, localization, registration, and cross-view attention.
    • Reduced cross-view lesion-centroid discrepancy by 99.1%, enabling spatially aligned multi-view representations for malignancy classification.
  • 2025
    Sparse-View Coronary Vessel Reconstruction
    • Research prototype for sparse-view 3D coronary vessel reconstruction from angiography projections using Gaussian geometry, differentiable rendering, and PINN-based hemodynamic regularization. Now archived.
  • 2025-present
    Open Horizon Robotics Perception Curriculum
    • Authoring open-source computer vision curriculum covering classical vision, deep learning, 3D vision, geometry, and perception physics.

Publications

  • 2026
    The use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to predict tumor recurrence in high-grade gliomas - a systematic review
    Neurosurgical Review
  • 2026
    Toward real-time 3D vascular state estimation from monocular fluoroscopy for endovascular robotic neurosurgery
    ELSR Workshop, IEEE/RSJ IROS
  • 2025
    A review of robotics in achieving autonomous and remote neuroendovascular intervention
    Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems (under review)
  • 2024
    Automated histopathological detection and classification of lung cancer with an image pre-processing pipeline and spatial attention with deep neural networks
    Cogent Engineering
  • 2024
    An explainable artificial intelligence integrated system for automatic detection of dengue from images of blood smears using transfer learning
    IEEE Access
  • 2023
    Deep learning based detection of monkeypox virus using skin lesion images
    Medicine in Novel Technology and Devices
  • 2023
    Detection of monkeypox from skin lesion images using deep learning networks and explainable artificial intelligence
    Applied Mathematics in Science and Engineering
  • 2023
    Processing and detection of lung and colon cancer from histopathological images using deep residual networks
    IEEE CONECCT
  • 2026
    Real-time 3D neuro-vascular deformation estimation from sparse 2D angiography
    Manuscript in preparation (IPCAI 2027 / IJCARS)
  • 2026
    Sparse-view cardiac reconstruction with neural implicit representations
    Manuscript in preparation

Honors and Awards

  • 2024
    • Biomedical Engineering Department Head's Fellowship, Carnegie Mellon University
  • 2023
    • Best Paper, AI Track, Second International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Computational Electronics and Communication

Skills

  • 3D Computer Vision and Geometry
    • Sparse-view and multi-view 3D reconstruction, 2D-3D registration, camera and projection geometry, SE(3) pose optimization, surface mesh reconstruction and deformation, discrete differential geometry, differentiable rendering.
  • Neural Representations and Geometric Deep Learning
    • Neural implicit representations, Fourier positional encodings, 3D Gaussian Splatting, Gaussian occupancy fields, neural deformation fields, graph neural networks, geometry-aware regularization.
  • Medical Imaging and Image-Guided Intervention
    • CT/CTA, MRI, fluoroscopy and angiography, ultrasound/echocardiography, mammography, endoscopy, histopathology, segmentation and registration, patient-specific anatomical reconstruction.
  • Machine Learning and Computational Modeling
    • Neural ODEs, physics-informed learning, multimodal learning, attention mechanisms, convolutional and graph neural networks, encoder-decoder models, curvature-based geometric descriptors.
  • Programming and Research Computing
    • Python, C++, CUDA, MATLAB, R, Julia; PyTorch, PyTorch3D, PyTorch Geometric, MONAI, TorchDiffEq; OpenCV, SimpleITK/ITK, VTK, VMTK, nnU-Net; Linux, Git, Docker.
  • Teaching and Mentoring
    • Teaching assistantships, curriculum design, technical mentoring, workshop instruction.

Other Interests

  • Mountain and trail biking, piano, gaming, and comics.