Ph.D. Student, Computer Engineering
Hi! My name is Harikrishna Kuttivelil — or Hari, for short. I am a Ph.D. student of the CSE Department at UC Santa Cruz and a member of the INRG lab with Professor Katia Obraczka as my advisor. My research interests are in edge intelligence, decentralized learning paradigms, and applications of decentralized and clustered edge intelligence to solve real-world problems. I’m working on a variety of projects pertaining to simulation tools for edge intelligence systems, developing community-structured decentralized learning frameworks, and applying edge intelligence to applications including wildfire sensor networks and distributed social networks. I’ve had collaborations with IMDEA in Madrid, Spain, and INRIA in Antibes, France, and visited those teams during a 6-month research internship abroad in Europe.
Prior to being a graduate student, I received my B.S. in Computer Engineering from UC Santa Cruz in 2017, with a particular interest in autonomous systems and sensor technologies. I then worked in the aerospace industry as a software engineer at Maxar Technologies (formerly Space Systems Loral), where I worked on dynamic spacecraft simulation and modeling, until 2020. My prior studies in autonomous and sensor systems and prior work with simulation and modeling contribute a lot of experience to the work I do today in INRG.
In addition to my research, I’m heavily invested in creating a more accessible and equitable higher education experience for students. I’m an active contributor and a regular fellow with the Teaching and Learning Center (TLC) — formerly the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning (CITL) — where I was the CSE Graduate Pedagogy Fellow in 2022 and peer support mentor for Graduate Student Instructors redesigning summer courses in 2022 and 2023. I have since used this experience to help design courses and give workshops, with a focus on improving accessibility and equity, introducing active learning strategies, and centering student learning. Outside of higher education, I’m also a regular mentor with the UC Santa Cruz Science Internship Program (SIP), leading some amazing teams of high school interns in 2020, 2021, and 2023.
In my spare time, I enjoy hiking, tide-pooling, and exploring new cities and national parks. I also enjoy playing, writing, and creating music and I play frequently with the UCSC Wind Ensemble on campus.
If you have any questions or would like to learn more about my research in edge intelligence and its applications or are interested in bettering the higher education experience for all, please feel free to contact me at hkuttive@ucsc.edu.
Research
Collaborative Decentralized Edge Intelligence: Systems, Frameworks, and Applications
NSB: Network Simulation Bridge
Publications
Kuttivelil, Harikrishna, and Katia Obraczka. “Community-Structured Decentralized Learning for Resilient EI.” Proceedings of the First Workshop on Systems Challenges in Reliable and Secure Federated Learning. 2021. (PDF)