About
Hello! I am Mahadevan. I am a software engineer by day (and by night). Coding is my passion. I currently work for the Speech Runtime team at Microsoft. Among other things, I own the runtime code for Cortana. So, anytime you say the keyword Cortana, you are running some part of the code I wrote. A bunch of extremely talented scientists at Microsoft also came up with the idea for a Custom Voice Assistant where anyone can design their own wakeword system. I also helped write the runtime code for that feature for which, wait for it, we are awaiting a Patent!
Other than spotting keywords, I also write code that improves Microsoft’s Speech Recognition Engine.
Before Microsoft, I worked for the Location Technologies team at Qualcomm. There, I developed algorithms to search for GNSS satellites as fast as possible and keep track of them for as long as possible. For one of those clever algorithms, I got a patent as well.
Before Qualcomm, I got my Master’s in Electrical Engineering from Pennsylvania State University. As part of my thesis, I developed a neural network model for predicting a patient’s conversion to Alzheimer’s disease based on MRI data. If you are interested, here you can find the full thesis.
My main interests are in Software Development and Machine Learning. I have taken various online courses to develop my skill set in these areas. Here is a brief list:
- Machine Learning (Coursera/Stanford)
- Probabilistic Graphical Models (Coursera/Stanford)
- Natural Language Processing (Coursera/Stanford)
- Structuring Machine Learning Projects
- Neural Networks and Deep Learning
- Improving Deep Neural Networks: Hyperparameter tuning, Regularization and Optimization