About

Ph.D. Student, Computer Engineering

My name is Harikrishna Kuttivelil, or Hari, for short. I graduated from UCSC with a B.S. in Computer Engineering, with an emphasis in robotics and control, in 2017. After some time in the aerospace industry working with some amazing people on dynamic spacecraft simulation, I came back to UCSC in 2018, splitting my time between my job and working towards an M.S. in Computer Engineering. During this time I explored classes in machine learning and cyber-physical systems. In 2020, I transitioned to studying full-time in the Ph.D. program that I am currently in, shifting my focus to collaborative systems and learning.

My academic interests lie in decentralized systems, collaborative machine learning, sensor networks, and agricultural, ecological, and environmental applications of those things. Recently, my research has been primarily in studying and developing decentralized strategies for collaborative, privacy-preserving machine learning at the network’s edge. In the future, I hope to further develop such community-based intelligent systems as potential solutions to problems in understanding the impact and mitigation of human activity in natural and human-interfacing environments.

Outside of the lab, I enjoy running and hiking, cooking, and writing and playing music. I love to play piano, marimba, vibraphone, sax, and more! You can listen to me playing with the UCSC Wind Ensemble, which I’ve been performing with on and off since 2013.