AKSHAY JINDAL
PhD | University of Cambridge
  • Name: Akshay Jindal

  • Job: Research Scientist | Intel

  • Location: Bellevue, USA

  • Email: akshayjin@gmail.com

About Me

I'm a Research Scientist in Intel's Graphics Research Org., based in Bellevue, Washington. I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge in 2022, under the supervision of Prof. Rafał Mantiuk. Previously, I was a research intern at NVIDIA Research (2022) and a Software Engineer at WalmartLabs R&D (2017-2018). I received an integrated master’s in Information Technology from IIIT-Bangalore in 2017.

My research interests lie at the intersection of real-time graphics and visual perception, with my PhD work encompassing quality modeling of VRS artifacts, perceptually optimized low bandwidth rendering, rendering for 3D displays, and gloss appearance. I've also worked on video game quality assessment at NVIDIA, computer graphics applications in retail at WalmartLabs, and structural classification of LiDAR point clouds during my Master's.

My Research Interests

Computer Graphics

Rendering; Visual Perception; Display Algorithms

AI and Analytics

Deep Learning; Adverserial training; Multi-agent systems

Computer Vision

Image-based rendering; in-painting; Light fields

Visualization

Virtual reality; Augmented Reality; Visual analytics

Resume

  • Working History

  • Research Scientist — Intel Graphics Research, USA

    April 2023 - Present

    Working on real-time graphics research.

  • Postdoc — University of Cambridge, UK

    Oct 2022 - Present

    Ran user studies to model inconsistencies in gloss presentation on displays.

  • Research Intern — NVIDIA Research, UK

    Feb 2022 - Sep 2022

    Developed a new metric for video game quality assessment. I was part of the Human Performance and Experience research group.

  • Early Stage Researcher — University of Cambridge, UK

    Jan 2019 - Jan 2022

    Ran psychophysical studies and modelled perception of image artifacts under motion, developed a perceptually-optimised VRS rendering algorithm, and built a hyper-realistic display.

  • Software Engineer II — @WalmartLabs, IN

    Aug 2017 - Dec 2018

    Developed and integrated an Augmented Reality product visualization feature with the existing Sam’s club iOS App, and a backend capable of serving millions of 3D models.

    Built various VR, AR and Diminished Reality prototypes for retail applications.

  • Engineering Intern — @WalmartLabs, IN

    Jan 2017 - Aug 2017

    Developed a help center web application for Sam’s Club using AngularJS as frontend and Java Spring/Cassandra as backend.

    Developed a VR shopping experience deployable on all major VR headsets and travelled to US HQ to showcase it to Walmart’s senior leadership.

  • Intern (Mobile Apps) - Hilti, Malaysia

    May 2016 - July 2016

    Developed an intelligent chatbot for handling all company’s products and services related queries with support for computer vision. Responsibilities included Facebook and Google APIs integration, build system management and cloud deployment.

  • Intern (Parallel Systems) - Siemens Tech. IN

    May 2015 - July 2015

    Worked on the scalability of one of their binary instrumentation tool. Responsibilities included performance evaluation, bottlenecks identification and program optimisation.

  • Education History

  • University of Cambridge, Cambridge

    Jan 2019 - Oct 2022

    Doctor of Philosophy, Computer Science

  • International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore

    July 2012 - July 2017

    Integrated Masters of Technology

    CGPA: 3.5/4

  • Aklank Public School, Kota

    July 2010 - July 2012

    Senior Secondary

    Board: Central Board of Secondary Education, New Delhi

    Percentage: 87%

  • St. Paul’s Sr. Sec. School, Udaipur

    July 1998 - July 2010

    Secondary

    Board: Central Board of Secondary Education, New Delhi

    CGPA: 9.4/10

Tools Skills

  • Unity 3D

  • OpenGL

  • PyTorch

  • OpenCL

Coding Skills

  • Python

  • MATLAB

  • Java

  • C#

  • C++

Language Skills

  • English

  • Hindi

  • German

Portfolio

All
Computer Graphics
Computer Vision
Artificial Intelligence
Visualization
Displays & Perception
See it in your space
An augmented reality native iOS app to visualize furniture in your space with features including variable lighting, progressive textures and baked shadows. [Demo on request]
VR Shopping
A virtual Walmart shopping experience. [Demo on request]
Diminished Reality
Realistically deleting objects from images
Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation of Mosquito-Borne Disease Transmissions
A tool built on GAMA platform to create a data driven simulation of an epidemic.

Publications

    The effect of display capabilities on the gloss consistency between real and virtual objects
    Chen, B.*., Jindal, A.*, Piovarči, M., Wang, C., Seidel, H.P., Didyk, P., Myszkowski, Karol., Serrano, A., & Mantiuk, R. K. SIGGRAPH Asia, 2023. (www)
    Rendering for Hyper-Realistic Displays: A Benchmark Study
    Jindal, A. & Mantiuk, R. K. Short Paper Track, European Conference on Visual Media Production, 2022. (pdf)
    How bright should a virtual object be to appear opaque in optical see-through AR?
    Liu, J., Jindal, A., Mantel, C., Forchhammer, S. & Mantiuk, R. K. Intenational Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), 2022. (pdf)
    Perceptual Model for Adaptive Local Shading and Refresh Rate
    Jindal, A., Wolski, K., Myszkowski, K. & Mantiuk, R. K. ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG) (SIGGRAPH Asia, 2021). (www)
    Reproducing Reality with a High-Dynamic-Range Multi-Focal Stereo Display
    Zhong, F., Jindal, A., Yöntem, A.O., Hanji, P., Watt, S.J. & Mantiuk, R. K. ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG) (SIGGRAPH Asia, 2021). (www)
    A perceptual model of motion quality for rendering with adaptive refresh-rate and resolution
    Denes, G., Jindal, A., Mikhailiuk, A., & Mantiuk, R. K. ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG) (SIGGRAPH, 2020). (www)
    Contour Extraction in Buildings in Airborne LiDAR Point Clouds Using Multi-scale Local Geometric Descriptors and Visual Analytics
    J. Sreevalsan-Nair, A. Jindal, and B. Kumari. IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing (2018). (www)
    Using Gradients and Tensor Voting in 3D Local Geometric Descriptors for Feature Detection in Airborne LiDAR Point Clouds in Urban Regions
    J.Sreevalsan-Nair, and A. Jindal. in the Proceedings of the 2017 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, July 2017. (www)
    Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation of Mosquito-Borne Disease Transmissions
    Akshay Jindal and Shrisha Rao. In Proceedings of the 16th Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems (AAMAS '17). (www)

Patents

    Methods and systems for generating a planogram at a retail facility
    MNK Wadhonkar, A Jindal and N Agarwal; Walmart Apollo LLC. US Patent App. 16/920,085, 2021. (www)
    System and method for assessing quality of produce
    MNK Wadhonkar, P Aggarwal, A Setia, A Jindal, R Kumar, A Jhunjhunwala, AA Grochala; Walmart Apollo LLC. US Patent App. 16/745,195, 2020. (www)

Invited Talks

Awards & Honors

  • Competitions

  • Runner-up of HPG Student Competition

    July 2022

    High‑Performance Graphics, Real-time Path Tracing Challenge

  • Best Pitch Award

    July 2019

    Entrepreneurship in Technical Science Summer School, Denmark

  • Runner-up of Walmart Hackday

    Feb 2018
  • Runner-up of MakeMyTrip Hackathon

    Dec 2016
  • Winner of DigitalOcean Cloud Hack

    Oct 2016
  • Finalist, DreamWorks Animation Challenge

    Sep 2016
  • Second Runner-up of HackforIndia: The Appfest 2016

    May 2016

    A 12 City Wide Hackathon across India.

  • Runner-up of Steer Quest

    Apr 2016

    Animation/ VFX/ Gaming Hackathon.

  • Finalist in IndiaHacks Travel and Transport

    Mar 2016

    India’s largest Hackathon.

  • Winner of The 2016 Hilti Mobile App Competition

    Feb 2016

    An International Hackathon by Hilti Asia IT Services.

  • Second Runner-up of Applift Datathon

    July 2015

    A data analytics hackathon by Applift India.

  • Winner of HackIndia (Bluemix category)

    July 2015
  • Winner of Hackathon - Code the future

    July 2015

    National Hackathon by AceHacker and Wipro Digital.

  • Winner of Informatica Codathon

    July 2014

    A national coding competition organised by Informatica.

  • Scholarships

  • Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, Research Fellowship.

    Jan 2019
  • Travel grant from Google India, 2017.

    March 2017
  • ACM-India/IARCS Travel Grant

    March 2017
  • Google-TATA-Udacity Android Nanodegree Scholarship

    Jan 2016