Kshitij Gupta

Kshitij Gupta is a senior at The Grainger College of Engineering, majoring in Computer Science. He is passionate about science and technology and joined University of Illinois to study state of the art topics with great professors, excellent laboratories, and a highly competent student body. Kshitij explored various technical areas at the university in mentorship of distinguished professors and found his calling in Machine Learning Research with a focus on Reinforcement Learning (RL).

Kshitij is a keen observer of human cognitive and learning processes. He aims to use RL to mimic human cognitive processes to build collaborative and communicative AI agents with “common-sense knowledge about our world” and ability to “plan”, “imagine” and “adapt” to changes in the environment. He is currently leading a research project in the area of Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning with professor Jian Peng at the Computer Science Department. He is also selected for the prestigious IBM-Illinois C3SR undergraduate research scholar program (URAI) and leads a research project in the area of NLP under the guidance of professor Suma Bhat in the Coordinated Science Laboratory.

Kshitij has industry experience in the areas of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Analytics and Software Engineering, having completed multiple internships in USA and in India. His work in the area of systems performance engineering at Microsoft Corporation during summer of 2019 was highly appreciated and he has been selected for a second internship at Microsoft in the Machine Learning Applied Research Group.

He will use the Henry Ford II Scholar Award and the Kay Simmons-Kappes Outstanding Contribution Scholarship to follow his passion in Reinforcement Learning. Kshitij is a recipient of the Illinois Engineering Achievement Scholarship, was selected a member of the James Scholar Honors program, and has been on the Dean’s List for every semester he has been a student at Illinois. Kshitij is grateful to the university for many awards and recognition, to his professors and mentors for their encouragement and to his peers for their continuous support.

In the past, he served as co-chair for the Special Interest group for AI under Association for Computer Machinery (ACM) on campus. He worked towards evangelizing AI/ML and taught advanced topics like Reinforcement learning to freshman and sophomores. As a teacher at Sail CS, a mentorship program in Urbana, Illinois, Kshitij teaches Computer Science concepts like algorithms, software analysis and design, and efficient coding to High school students. He also helped organize Midwest’s Largest Tech Conference “Reflections Projections” as a member of the Organizing Committee. Outside of the classroom, he enjoys sailing and has participated in various sailingexpeditions.