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AI/ML Researcher

Every problem computing can solve excites me! I focus on R&D of Intelligent Systems for societal good, with particular emphasis on Trustworthy and Secure AI. My research investigates: How can we design secure, trustworthy ML systems that resist manipulation, minimize leakage, preserve privacy, maintain traceable grounding, and serve diverse users fairly under uncertainty? How can evaluation benchmarks gauge ML trustworthiness under realistic, adversarial contexts?
Natural Language Processing: Non-linear language understanding and reasoning, evaluation benchmarking of LLMs and decision-support systems, advancing information retrieval and reasoning (meta-conversational intelligence, AI alignment), fairness in ML systems.

In my free time, I build practical computing tools (PDFX - PDF Utility, SSTX - Speech to Text, SocialE - Phishing Awareness System).

Manoj Adhikari Resume

Research Experience

Computing Lab of East Tennessee State University

Sep 2024 – Present

Project: BucAIDE: Intelligent Q&A platform

Advisors: Dr. Shehenaz Shaik, Dr. Ahmad Al Doulat

  • Study and design information-retrieval architectures that support robust, context-aware decision-making.
  • Developed and evaluated prompt chains and query-rewriting templates, to ensure content safety and preserve contextual fidelity across multi-turn dialogue.
  • Improved system correctness to 88% with semantic search, reranking, topic modeling, and coreferencing.
  • Performed mixed-methods evaluation: focus-group study and quantitative system benchmarking, to assess usability, reliability, and decision-support effectiveness.

Project: EchoStress: Sensing Stress in Sound

Advisor: Dr. Shehenaz Shaik

  • Designed an audio–text alignment pipeline using WhisperX to obtain high-fidelity transcriptions with precise word- and phoneme-level timing, enabling reliable downstream prosodic analysis.
  • Developed a python package to extract prosodic features and perform robust syllable-level alignment.
  • Implemented clustering to identify stressed vs. unstressed syllables, evaluating performance across multiple prosodic feature subsets and clustering configurations.

Project: Intelligent Plumbing Info. & Performance Eval. tool

Advisor: Dr. Md Rasheduzzaman

  • Contributed to modernizing the PIPE framework by transforming a rule-based assessment tool into an intelligent decision-support system for evaluating building-level plumbing risks.
  • Designed retrieval- and reasoning-oriented pipelines that incorporate domain constraints, contextual priors, and multi-factor building metadata to improve decision fidelity and reduce hallucination risk.
  • Collaborated with environmental health researchers to validate system outputs against established plumbing risk models and real-world case studies.

Fr. Lockie & Stiller Research Program

St. Xavier's College

2018 – 2019

Crime Risk Assessment - Kathmandu Valley

Advisor: Lecturer Rajan Karmacharya

  • Developed data preprocessing and analytical workflow to examine criminal activity trends and built a structured risk matrix for evaluating threat levels. Created geospatial visualizations to highlight crime-prone areas.

Work Experience

Graduate Teaching Assistant

East Tennessee State University

Aug 2023 – May 2025
Tennessee, USA

  • Taught CSCI 1100/1150 (Using Information Technology) in person and led lab sessions for CSCI 1250 (Introduction to Programming).
  • Collaborated with the professor to develop course materials on topics of Data, AI, and Cybersecurity literacy.
  • Graded assignments and held regular office hours to provide academic support and guidance to students.

Data Analyst-II

Renegade Insurance

Feb 2020 – Jul 2023
Lalitpur, Nepal

  • Developed ETL pipelines to warehouse heterogeneous datasets from 16+ U.S insurance carriers, ensuring high data integrity, observability, and readiness for real-time analytics and reporting.
  • Conducted in-depth quantitative analysis and KPI tracking across leads, quotes, and policy sales spanning 20+ U.S states, identifying market trends, behavioral patterns, and optimization opportunities using Python.
  • Collaborated with data scientists and engineers to design and deliver data solutions and ad-hoc analytical products for vendor stakeholders, improving operational efficiency and supporting business scalability.

Publications & Research

Conference Paper

AIDE: Leveraging Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Context-Aware Educational Data Retrieval and Dialogue

Authors: M. Adhikari, P. Joshi, G.V. Ramos, A. Al Doulat, S. Shaik

Published in: IEEE SmartNet 2025 (International Conference on Smart Applications, Communications and Networking)

This research presents AIDE, a novel system that leverages Retrieval-Augmented Generation to enhance educational data retrieval and enable context-aware dialogue for improved learning experiences.

Read More • Citations: 1
Conference Paper

Vision-Based Driver Drowsiness and Distraction Detection through Behavioral Indicators of Fatigue

Authors: M. Adhikari, P. Joshi, S. Shrestha, S. Shaik

Published in: IEEE SoutheastCon 2025, pp. 261-266

This study introduces a vision-based system for detecting driver drowsiness and distraction by analyzing behavioral indicators of fatigue, contributing to safer driving environments through real-time monitoring.

Read More • Citations: 2
Conference Paper

Real-Time Driver Drowsiness Detection Using CNN, MediaPipe, and ML Classifiers

Authors: P. Joshi, M. Adhikari, S. Shrestha, S. Shaik

Published in: IEEE SoutheastCon 2025, pp. 589-594

This paper presents a real-time drowsiness detection system combining Convolutional Neural Networks, MediaPipe framework, and machine learning classifiers to identify driver fatigue with high accuracy.

Read More • Citations: 1
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Technical Skills

I've developed a diverse skill set across multiple domains, technologies, and frameworks:

Programming

Python R JavaScript Java C C++ C#

Database

SQL (MySQL, PostgreSQL) NoSQL (MongoDB, Elasticsearch) Amazon Redshift ChromaDB PineCone

BI & Orchestration tools

PowerBI Tableau Amazon QuickSight Looker Excel Streamlit Apache Airflow PySpark Spark Streaming

Cloud & Tools

AWS GCP Docker Kubernetes CI/CD (GitHub Actions) S3 SageMaker Lambda Azure AI Studio Git Flask Django REST Framework REST APIs FastAPI

AI/ML & NLP

GenAI LLMs TensorFlow PyTorch Scikit-learn Transformers RAG SpaCy Neural Network Model Optimization Neural Evaluation Traditional Models Keras

Soft Skills

Leadership Stakeholder Engagement Collaboration Problem-Solving Teamwork Research Documentation

Featured Projects

A showcase of data science projects demonstrating practical solutions to real-world problems

BucAIDE - University Assistance System

Advanced RAG architecture based conversational & context aware intelligent Q&A system designed to address complex queries for current & prospective ETSU scholars, featuring advanced accessibility capabilities. (Funded- Small Grants in Support).

React Flask Langchain Llama 2 ChromaDB Hugging Face Sentence Transformers AWS Docker

Transcripta – Audio insight platform

Transcripta is a web and mobile application that allows users to record audio, get real-time transcriptions, and receive AI-generated summaries and actionable insights. It’s designed for meetings, lectures, interviews, or brainstorming sessions.

Python React FastAPI Pandas

Phishing Awareness and Simulation System

Phishing Simulation System with multi-factor authentication with feature of interactive analytical dashboards & reports on breach data, template creation, role, & permission management.

Python Django REST framework SQL

Supply Chain Analytics

Using a real-world dataset, the project aims to identify and address key challenges in shipment and inventory management. It analyzes supply chain inefficiencies and delivers interactive dashboards to inform stakeholders and recommend structural improvements.

Python Pandas NumPy PowerBI

Customer Segmentation Using Clustering

Applied K-Means and Hierarchical clustering on retail data computing RFM metrics to identify distinct customer groups. Conducted data cleaning, visualization, normalization, and cluster evaluation (silhouette score) to uncover high-value and low-value customer segments.

Python Pandas NumPy Matplotlib Seaborn Scikit-learn

Sentiment360 - Customer Sentiment & Product Insights

An interactive NLP analytics system that analyzes Amazon product reviews. Performs sentiment classification and LDA-based topic modeling for diagnostic analysis. Identified key pain points across product lines, helping product quality improvements.

Python Pandas NLP Streamlit BERT PowerBI

Education

Master's, Computer Science

GPA: 4.0

East Tennessee State University

Aug 2023 - May 2025 Johnson City, Tennessee

Relevant Courses:

Machine Learning NLP Data Analytics & Visualization Software Verification & Validation Software Production Software Design Software System Engineering Software Project Management

Bachelor's, Computer Science

GPA: 3.68

Tribhuvan University

Aug 2016 - May 2020 Kathmandu, Nepal

Relevant Courses:

Data Warehouse & Data Mining Analysis of Algorithm Artificial Intelligence Web Technologies DBMS Theory of Computation Image Processing Calculas Linear Algebra Discrete Mathematics Simulation & Modeling Numerical Methods Computer Architecture

Grants, Awards & Honors

Recognition for research excellence, academic achievement, and community contributions (G = Grant, A = Award, H = Honor)

G1

Small Grant in Support – Impactful Capstone

East Tennessee State University

$700 2025
A1

Frank and Ginger Hawk Rutherford Scholarship

East Tennessee State University

$1000 2024
A2

Fr. Martin P. Coyne, S.J Memorial Award Moral Uprightness

Tribhuvan University, St. Xavier's College

2020
A3

Fr. Lockie & Stiller Research Award

Tribhuvan University, St. Xavier's College

$550 2019
H1

Google Crowdsource Appreciation Award

Google

2018

Fellowship & Volunteering

Contributing to the community through mentorship, organization, and technical leadership

IEEEDay Virtual AI Summit

Oct 2025

IEEE Day Ambassador, Co-organizer

IEEE Apollo 12 AI & STEM Workshop

Nov 2025

Mentor

USS Hornet Museum

Google DevFest Event

2018, 2019

Mentor

Google Dev. Group, Dang, Nepal

Remote Compute Connect Initiatives

2017

Tech Lead

St. Xavier's College

Contact Me

Feel free to reach out to me for collaborations, opportunities, or just to say hello!

Get In Touch

Location

California, USA

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