Welcome

I am a Research Scientist in AI/ML at Helmholtz Zentrum Hereon in Geesthacht, Germany. My work involves developing a climate model to understand atmospheric, oceanic, and sea ice interactions across seasonal to decadal timescales. This project is funded by the Helmholtz Foundation Model Initiative and supported by Helmholtz AI.

Prior to this, I completed my PhD in the CGV group at the Faculty of Computer Science, TU Dresden in Dresden, Germany, supervised by Prof. Dr. Stefan Gumhold. My PhD research focused on Out-of-Distribution Detection, Deep Probabilistic Generative Models, and solving Inverse Problems using Invertible Neural Networks.

Before my PhD, I completed a Master's in Electrical Engineering at TU Dresden, Germany, graduating with the highest distinction. I earned my Bachelor's in Electronics and Communication Engineering at Dr. MGR Educational and Research Institute, Chennai, India, where I was the university topper and a gold medallist.

I have worked as a data engineer at HCL Technologies in Chennai, India, and as a software engineer at Samsung India Electronics in Noida, India. At TU Dresden, I secured research funding from the German federal government and led a research group on an industrial project focused on reliable machine learning in collaboration with Carl Zeiss Meditec AG, Germany.

Reviewing Activities: IEEE Sensors and MICCAI.

News

[Nov 2024] I defended my doctoral dissertation and earned the title 'Dr.-Ing'.
[Jan 2024] Our paper was accepted at AAAI 2024.
[Mar 2023] Our paper was selected as a highlight at CVPR 2023, placing it in the top 10% of accepted papers.
[Sep 2022] Our paper was accepted at ACCV 2022.
[Jan 2021] I secured 100,000 € funding from BMBF to lead an AI project in collaboration with Carl Zeiss Meditec AG.
[Jan 2020] Our paper was accepted at ISBI 2020.

Publications

    For a full overview of my publications, visit my Google Scholar page.

  • FusionINN: Decomposable Image Fusion for Brain Tumor Monitoring

    Nishant Kumar, Ziyan Tao, Jaikirat Singh, Yang Li, Peiwen Sun, Binghui Zhao, Stefan Gumhold
    IJCAI Workshop 2024 (Oral)
    [arXiv] [DOI] [Code] [Slides]

  • Quantile-based Maximum Likelihood Training for Outlier Detection

    Masoud Taghikhah*, Nishant Kumar*, Siniša Šegvić, Abouzar Eslami, Stefan Gumhold
    AAAI 2024, *Joint First Author
    [arXiv] [DOI] [Code] [Poster]

  • Robust Reconstruction of the Void Fraction from Noisy Magnetic Flux Density Using Invertible Neural Networks

    Nishant Kumar, Lukas Krause, Thomas Wondrak, Sven Eckert, Kerstin Eckert, Stefan Gumhold
    Sensors 2024
    [DOI]

  • Normalizing Flow based Feature Synthesis for Outlier-Aware Object Detection

    Nishant Kumar, Siniša Šegvić, Abouzar Eslami, Stefan Gumhold
    CVPR 2023 (Highlight)
    [arXiv] [DOI] [Code] [Poster] [Slides] [Video]

  • Enhancing Fairness of Visual Attribute Predictors

    Tobias Hänel, Nishant Kumar, Dmitrij Schlesinger, Mengze Li, Erdem Ünal, Abouzar Eslami, Stefan Gumhold
    ACCV 2022
    [arXiv] [DOI] [Code] [Poster] [Video]

  • FuseVis: Interpreting Neural Networks for Image Fusion Using Per-Pixel Saliency Visualization

    Nishant Kumar, Stefan Gumhold
    Computers 2020
    [arXiv] [DOI] [Code] [Video]

  • Visualisation of Medical Image Fusion and Translation for Accurate Diagnosis of High Grade Gliomas

    Nishant Kumar, Nico Hoffmann, Matthias Kirsch, Stefan Gumhold
    ISBI 2020
    [arXiv] [DOI] [Code]

  • Structural Similarity based Anatomical and Functional Brain Imaging Fusion

    Nishant Kumar, Nico Hoffmann, Martin Oelschlägel, Edmund Koch, Matthias Kirsch, Stefan Gumhold
    MICCAI Workshop 2019
    [arXiv] [DOI] [Code] [Poster]

  • Multimodal Medical Image Fusion by Optimizing Learned Pixel Weights Using Structural Similarity Index

    Nishant Kumar, Nico Hoffmann, Martin Oelschlägel, Edmund Koch, Matthias Kirsch, Stefan Gumhold
    EMBC 1-Page Paper 2019
    [Paper] [Poster] [Code]

Education

  • PhD in Advanced Artificial Intelligence

    July 2019 - July 2024
    Chair of Computer Graphics and Visualization, TU Dresden, Germany
    [Dissertation Link] [PDF]

  • Master's in Nanoelectronic Systems

    October 2015 - April 2018
    Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, TU Dresden, Germany
    [Thesis] [Code]

  • Bachelor's in Electronics and Communication

    2008 - 2012
    Dr MGR Educational and Research Institute, Chennai, India

  • Higher Secondary School

    2008
    Somerville School, Greater Noida, India

Experience

  • Research Scientist

    September 2024 - present
    Helmholtz AI, Helmholtz Zentrum Hereon, Germany

  • Scientific Research Assistant

    July 2018 - July 2024
    Chair of Computer Graphics and Visualization, TU Dresden, Germany

  • Student Research Assistant

    May 2016 - May 2017
    Fraunhofer IIS, Dresden, Germany

  • Data Engineer

    October 2013 - September 2015
    HCL Technologies, Chennai, India

  • Software Engineer

    August 2012 - September 2013
    Samsung India Electronics, Noida, India

Teaching

I organized the following courses during my PhD studies at TU Dresden:
  • Complex Lab (Winter Semester 2018/19) The task was the development of an Augmented Reality application to visualize the interior of real-world objects. I supervised five Master's students for this coursework. [Link]
  • Complex Lab (Summer Semester 2020) The task was to develop a Virtual Reality application for immersive visualization of the human brain using Tractography data. I supervised around eight Master's and Bachelor's students for this coursework. [Link]
  • Advanced Seminar (Summer Semester 2023) The seminar dealt with Recent Trends in Generative AI, where students performed an extensive literature study of popular Generative AI approaches. I directly supervised six students and managed the complete coursework during the semester. [Link]
I was directly involved in supervising students for the:
  • Advanced Seminar in the Summer Semesters of 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022, and 2023.
  • Advanced Seminar in the Winter Semester of 2019
During my PhD studies, I have collaborated with three PhD students and directly supervised:
  • Six Master's theses
  • Three Bachelor's theses
  • Four Research Projects

Awards

  • Secured 100,000 € Research Funding

    2021
    Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Germany

  • Gold Medallist and University Topper (Bachelor Studies)

    2012
    Dr. MGR Educational and Research Institute, Chennai, India

  • CV Raman Academic Medal

    2012
    Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET), India/UK

  • All India Rank Holder in National IT Aptitude Test

    2012
    National Institute of Information Technology (NIIT), India

  • Rank 1 in Mathematics (High School)

    2006
    Somerville School, Greater Noida, India

Certifications

  • Summer School for Machine Learning in Natural and Life Sciences

    2019
    Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

  • Certification in Machine Learning

    2017
    Non-credit online course by Stanford University on Coursera

  • Certification in Robotics

    2011-2012
    Onsite course by Lema Labs, IIT Madras, Chennai, India

  • Certification in Business Management

    2010 - 2012
    Online course by SJMSOM, IIT Bombay, India