Bio

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I am an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Mississippi State University, with over eleven years of research experience in machine learning, computer vision, spatio-temporal modeling, and natural language processing. My research is fundamentally interdisciplinary, grounded in computer science and applied to high-impact problems in agricultural systems, animal health, food safety, and disease surveillance. Working in close collaboration with the USDA Agricultural Research Service and the College of Veterinary Medicine, I develop AI systems that are interpretable, adaptive, and directly useful to farmers, veterinarians, and policymakers. I received the MCBIOS Young Scientist Recognition for research bridging AI with life science applications, and have published in venues including AAAI, ACM SIGSPATIAL, IEEE BigData, and IEEE EMBC.

Academic Appointments

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• Assistant Research Professor, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Mississippi State University (April 2024 – Present)
• Research Scientist I, Mississippi State University (Feb 2023 – April 2024)
• Post-doctoral Associate, Mississippi State University (Sep 2021 – Jan 2023)
• Research Assistant, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (May 2016 – Aug 2021)

Education

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• Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (2021)
  Advisor: Dr. Cynthia Matuszek
  Dissertation: Learning Natural Language from Probabilistic Perceptual Representations with Limited Resources
• Chartered Engineer (India), Computer Engineering — Institution of Engineers, India (2020)

Contact

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pillai@cse.msstate.edu
Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering
Mississippi State University
Mississippi State, MS 39762