Hi! I'm Ruchira Ray. (she/they)

Hi! I'm Ruchira Ray. (she/they)

I'm an Applied AI Research Engineer at rStream, developing AI for on-site waste sorting.


My research interest lies in multimodal robotics perception & generative modeling.


I have a Master's in CS from UT Austin with a focus on controlled data generation and editing (advised by Dr. Amir Zamir & Dr. Philipp Krähenbühl).


I'm passionate about exploring the social impact of robotics (Dr. Roberto Martín-Martín & UT Good Systems) and I am active organiser of Queer in AI and Robotics.


I'm an Applied AI Research Engineer at rStream Recycling, developing AI for on-site waste sorting.


My research interest lies in multimodal robotics perception & generative modeling.


I have a Master's in CS from UT Austin with a focus on controlled data generation and editing (advised by Dr. Amir Zamir & Dr. Philipp Krähenbühl).


I'm passionate about exploring the social impact of robotics (Dr. Roberto Martín-Martín & UT Good Systems) and I am active organiser of Queer in AI and Robotics.


Selected Work Experience

Developing AI systems for on-site waste detection and sorting. Working on multi-object tracking and model robustness against domain changes & class flickering.

Applied AI Research Engineer

Developed Squeeze-and-Excitation + feature genuinization model for fake audio detection for Bixby. Evaluated on ASVSpoof 2019, outperforming other models using Mel Spectrogram features.

Supervisor: Sourabh Tiwari

ML Research Engineer

Developed a method to control text-to-image generation system using diffusion models & guided adversarial prompts for effective data generation. Achieved data-efficient generations, outperforming others in low-data regimes across various tasks & distribution shifts.

Supervisor: Prof. Amir Zamir & Dr. Teresa Yeo

Research Fellow & Master's Thesis

  • Investigating the motivation behind the desire for robot automation of different social groups using statistical modelling & analysis and finding correlations.


  • Built an audio-based trash classification model on a Franka Panda arm for waste segregation.

Investigating the motivation behind the desire for robot automation of different social groups using statistical modelling & analysis and finding correlations.


Built an audio-based trash classification model on a Franka Panda arm for waste segregation.

Supervisor: Dr. Roberto Martin-Martin & Dr. Sam Shorey

Supervisor: Dr. Roberto Martin-Martin & Dr. Sam Shorey

Graduate Research Assistant

University of Texas at Austin

RBT350 Gateway to Robotics: created & graded homework and exams, led hands-on review sessions, taught robot assembly (building the Stanford Pupper Robot from scratch) and control (PD control, forward and inverse kinematics), held office hours, and managed the course webpage.

Supervisor: Dr. Roberto Martin-Martin (Fall 2023), Dr. Mitchell Pryor (Spring 2024)

Graduate Teaching Assistant

MacEwan University

Developed mathematical equation recognition model for first-year calculus assignments and exams using YOLOR.

Supervisor: Prof. Jeffrey Davis

MITACS Globalink Intern

Publications & Posters

Method to control text-to-image generation system using guided adversarial prompts for effective training data generation.

Teresa Yeo*, Andrei Atanov*, Harold Benoit†, Aleksandr Alekseev†, Ruchira Ray, Pooya Esmaeil Akhoondi, Amir Zamir

ArXiv, 2024

Paper

Exploring statistically what drives our desire for robot automation

Ruchira Ray, Leona Pang, Sanjana Srivastava, Li Fei-Fei, Samantha Shorey, Roberto Martín-Martín

ArXiv, 2025

Paper

Queer in AI as a case study for community-led participatory design in AI.

Ruchira Ray, Organizers Of Queer in AI

Paper

ACM FAccT, 2023

BEST PAPER AWARD

Squeeze-and-Excitation encoder decoder model for fake/spoofed audio detection.

Ruchira Ray, Sanka Karthik, Vinayak Mathur, Prashant Kumar, Maragatham G, Sourabh Tiwari, Rashmi T Shankarappa

ICCCNT, 2021

Queer in AI, ICML, 2021

Paper

Poster

Deep Belief Network and Variational Autoencoder hybrid architecture for collaborative filtering.

Rabi Shaw, Ruchira Ray, Sharmistha Mandal, Bidyut Kr. Patra,

Poster

M2L School, 2021

Summarizing and comparing different data augmentation strategies using S3PRL toolkits in speech-processing tasks.

Mina Huh*, Ruchira Ray*, Corey Karnei*

Paper

ArXiv, 2023

Multiple prompting strategies to jailbreak LLMs' decision-making processes and help them balance refusing unsafe prompts without decreasing helpfulness.

Ruchira Ray*, Ruchi Bhalani*

Paper

ArXiv, 2024

* = Equal Contribution

My Updates

Selected in Top 10 in the CSE Department for B.Tech Thesis

March, 2022

Cost-efficient Gait Recognition using 3D CNN

Won Best Paper Award at ACM FAccT23 for

June, 2023

Queer In AI: A Case Study in Community-Led Participatory AI

Presented our work at 12th ICCCNT, 2021

July, 2021

Feature Genuinization based Residual Squeeze-and-Excitation for Audio Anti-Spoofing in Sound AI

Selected to attend

July, 2021

Eastern European Machine Learning Summer School

Selected to attend and present DBVAE poster at

January, 2021

Mediterranean Machine Learning (M2L) Summer School

Won a silver medal at

Feb, 2019

SRM University Research Day

Won and attended

July, 2021

Grace Hopper Scholarship

Won SRMJEE Merit Scholarship from SRM University

June, 2018

Waives 50 % of Tuition

Clubs & Societies

Foster awareness of LGBTQ+ issues, cultivate a dynamic community of LGBTQ+ researchers and illuminate the remarkable contributions of LGBTQ+ scientists in the field of robotics. Organised social for IROS'23. Currently organising for RLC 2024.

Founder & Organiser

2023

Actively working towards increasing the participation of LGBTQ+ individuals in AI and spreading awareness of diversity in STEM. Organised QAI Workshop for Neurips’21, Neurips'23, ICML'23. Currently organising Neurips'24

Organiser

2021

Spearhead a team of 45+ students to organize events, increase outreach and supervise projects. Outreach and number of events tripled in the year 2020-2021.

Chairperson and ML Lead

2020-2022

Worked on multidisciplinary pet-projects, incharge of mentoring associates, conducting interviews for new recruits , managing events etc.

Undergraduate Artificial Intelligence Researcher

2019-2022

THANKS FOR STOPPING BY!

THANKS FOR STOPPING BY!

Design Courtesy to Anoushka

Publications & Posters

Feature Genuinization based Residual Squeeze-and-Excitation for Audio Anti-Spoofing in Sound AI

Ruchira Ray, Organizers Of Queer in AI

Paper

ACM FAccT, 2023

BEST PAPER AWARD

Feature Genuinization based Residual Squeeze-and-Excitation for Audio Anti-Spoofing in Sound AI

Ruchira Ray, Sanka Karthik, Vinayak Mathur, Prashant Kumar, Maragatham G, Sourabh Tiwari, Rashmi T Shankarappa

ICCCNT, 2021

Queer in AI, ICML, 2021

Paper

DBVAE: Deep Belief Variational Autoencoder for top-N Recommender Systems

Rabi Shaw, Ruchira Ray, Sharmistha Mandal, Bidyut Kr. Patra

Poster

M2L School, 2021

A Comparison of Speech Data Augmentation Methods Using S3PRL Toolkit

Mina Huh*, Ruchira Ray*, Corey Karnei*

Paper

ArXiv, 2023

Mitigating Exaggerated Safety in Large Language Models

Ruchira Ray*, Ruchi Bhalani*

Paper

ArXiv, 2024

Controlled Training Data Generation with Diffusion Models

Teresa Yeo*, Andrei Atanov*, Harold Benoit†, Aleksandr Alekseev†, Ruchira Ray, Pooya Esmaeil Akhoondi, Amir Zamir

ArXiv, 2024

Paper

Why Automate This? Exploring the Connection between Time Use, Well-being and Robot Automation Across Social Groups

Ruchira Ray, Leona Pang, Sanjana Srivastava, Li Fei-Fei, Samantha Shorey, Roberto Martín-Martín

Paper

ArXiv, 2025

* = Equal Contribution

My Updates

Selected in Top 10 in the CSE Department for B.Tech Thesis

March, 2022

Cost-efficient Gait Recognition using 3D CNN

Won Best Paper Award at ACM FAccT23 for

June, 2023

Queer In AI: A Case Study in Community-Led Participatory AI

Presented our work at 12th ICCCNT, 2021

July, 2021

Feature Genuinization based Residual Squeeze-and-Excitation for Audio Anti-Spoofing in Sound AI

Selected to attend

July, 2021

Eastern European Machine Learning Summer School

Selected to attend and present DBVAE poster at

January, 2021

Mediterranean Machine Learning (M2L) Summer School

Won a silver medal at

Feb, 2019

SRM University Research Day

Won and attended

July, 2021

Grace Hopper Scholarship

Won SRMJEE Merit Scholarship from SRM University

June, 2018

Waives 50 % of Tuition

Clubs & Societies

Queer in AI Robotics

Foster awareness of LGBTQ+ issues, cultivate a dynamic community of LGBTQ+ researchers and illuminate the remarkable contributions of LGBTQ+ scientists in the field of robotics. Organised social for IROS'23. Organising for HRI 2025.

Founder & Organiser

2023

Queer in AI

Actively working towards increasing the participation of LGBTQ+ individuals in AI and spreading awareness of diversity in STEM. Organised QAI Workshop for Neurips’21, Neurips'23, ICML'23. Currently organising Neurips'24

Organiser

2021

ACM Women SRM Student Chapter

Spearhead a team of 45+ students to organize events, increase outreach and supervise projects. Outreach and number of events tripled in the year 2020-2021.

Chairperson and ML Lead

2020-2022

Next Tech Lab

Worked on multidisciplinary pet-projects, incharge of mentoring associates, conducting interviews for new recruits , managing events etc.

Undergraduate Artificial Intelligence Researcher

2019-2022

Design Courtesy to Anoushka

THANKS FOR STOPPING BY!