# Monika Ahirwar

> AI-ML|8 yrs experience|CSE IIT Madras|Mech IIT Bombay

Location: San Francisco, California, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/monikaahirwar

I am a Machine Learning engineer with 7+ years of experience and a Masters in Computer Science. I solve real-life problems using AI-ML techniques - Computer Vision, NLP, Reinforcement Learning, and build AI-ML based applications. I have also gained knowledge of working with Big Data using Spark, Hadoop. I am looking forward to working in a challenging work environment with extensive learning and research.

## Work Experience
### Sr ML Engineer @ Gladstone Institutes
Jan 2025 – Present | San Francisco, CA
- Leading NIH grant project with Oxford University and collaborating with an interdisciplinary team of Pathologists, Biologists, Data scientists regarding data, annotation, validation and insights
- Distinguished disease type using pre-training with contrastive learning, graph transformers and Vision Transformer segmentation models at patch, interconnected patch and pathology level; currently preparing manuscript for publication
- Developed xAI techniques for visualizing attentions across entire whole slide image in QuPath; trained GAN models to remove marker stains and applied alignment in whole slide images
- Integrated and LoRA finetuned QwenVL, LLaVA LLM into a multi-modal pipeline for automated analysis of crop based attentions heatmaps explaining the distribution, improving inference speed and accuracy
- Designed and trained a closed loop Reinforcement learning based PPO agent for a thinking microscope robot to allow it to tune itself for optimal power and duration to maximize cell lives in wells
- Support grant efforts with preliminary analyses and proposal writing based on literature review

### ML Engineer @ Gladstone Institutes
Jan 2022 – Jan 2025 | San Francisco, CA
- Developed scalable, automated deep learning pipeline using multi-GPU nodes for segmenting and classifying neurodegenerative pathologies in gigapixel whole slide images
- Deployed trained model for detecting plaques in AD histopathological tissue images in RunPod cloud
- Created inter-rater agreement tool within QuPath using Java Groovy to facilitate collecting annotations from various pathologists with the aim of generating consensus training dataset
- Support grant efforts with preliminary analyses and proposal writing based on literature review
- Built generalized attention-based training framework using pretrained foundation models to classify whole slide images for abnormal tissue detection and track the movement of neurons in microscopic images
- Training foundational model for classifying & segmenting neuronal vs glial cells from microscopic images

### Machine Learning Engineer / Data Scientist @ Publicis Sapient
Jan 2019 – Jan 2022 | Bengaluru Area, India
Internal product:
- Created a scalable end to end resume-parser for automated resume screening and matching relevant job roles accelerating the hiring process
- Trained YOLO object detection model for detecting paragraph, heading, photograph in resume; BERT classifier for headers; extracted industry-skill years of experience, title matrix using text algorithms 
 and libraries like Regex, BERT, Simstring etc
- Extracted features such as section, skills from Job description and created weighted ranking for role and resume match; deployed in AWS EC2 Nginx; used Flask/Streamlit for API service

UAE based Client with Leisure & Entertainment business:
- Identified high lifetime valued customers with 45% recall improvement over baseline using LSTM based time series regression approach; experimented with Random Forest, LGBM, XGBoost models
- Improved 8% revenue gain and increased package incidence of client’s market by determining optimal pricing of packages using clustering with Entropy based Discretization technique and Simulated Annealing approach
- Evaluated performance across concepts and screens by sites and markets; built an AWS alert system to recommend relevant business action
-Performed sentiment analysis of NPS customer survey data of malls using NLTK tools

US based client with e-com retail business:
- Segmented buying behavior patterns for similar items using order transactions (used K-mean clustering)
- Identified potential bundle candidates and likelihood of buying together using Apriori Algorithm
- Generated similarity ranking of recommended bundles based on product images using ANNOY indexing and CNN - VGG network and product metadata

US based client with transportation business:
- Used LSH algorithmic approach to find the control customer highly similar to each test customer
- Performed Statistical tests and analyzed performance of pre and post enrollment

### Teaching Assistant @ Indian Institute of Technology, Madras
Jan 2019 – Jan 2019 | Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Advanced Programming Lab,  Introduction to Programming Lab

### Researcher @ Indian Institute of Technology, Madras
Jan 2018 – Jan 2019 | India
As a researcher, I worked on my M.Tech thesis "Performance Evaluation of SP Methods for Simulation Optimisation & Policy Learning" under the guidance of Prof. Prashanth L.A. Overview of my work:
- Evaluated and compared performances of stochastic optimisation algorithms using Simultaneous Perturbation methods on multimodal functions with increasing dimensions
- Developed policy gradient using Simultaneous Perturbation techniques to train Neural Network for optimizing parameterized policy in Reinforcement Learning problems
- Obtained best parameter settings for classic control environments with discrete and continuous action space and compared performance with REINFORCE algorithm

### Manager, Analytics @ Fullerton India Credit Company Ltd.
Jan 2016 – Jan 2017 | Mumbai
My main responsibilities involved working on analysis and modeling of Personal Loan lending business. Major work is as follows:
- Developed forecasting model using Basel probability of default (PD), exposure at default (EAD) and loss at default (LGD) for analyzing Economic Downturn, and Expected and Unexpected Loss; simulated pricing, and optimized cut-offs for application scores.
- Tracked end to end process flow of digital loans to improve turnaround times and to aid in analyzing customer profiles to determine target benchmarks

### Assitant Manager, Analytics @ Fullerton India Credit Company Ltd.
Jan 2014 – Jan 2016 | Mumbai Area, India
- Used Decision Tree approach and segmentation analysis to design Cross-sell/Up-sell of products and test programs; frequently reviewed portfolio risk performance of test programs

### Summer Intern, Operations Management(R&D) @ Tata Research Development and Design Centre (TRDDC)
Jan 2013 – Jan 2013
Overview of my work at TRDDC as follows:
- Co-authored a research paper on workforce allocation analysis using Bayesian Network; presented at the 17th Annual International Conference of Society of Operations Management
- Analysed data of over 2500 employees and developed decision support system to determine qualitative influence of TCS workforce allocation on employee performance
- Solved multi-objective optimization problems using IBM Cplex with excel and VBA to aid in the above work

### Events Manager @ Radiance - IITB
Jan 2012 – Jan 2013
Radiance is a Mechanical dept technical festival organised every year by the students. My work as follows:
- Led 60+ volunteers as a part of 14 member team to organize several technical competitions
- Planned and executed a nationwide industry oriented challenge sponsored by Mahindra to design optimal weight balancing mechanism for agricultural tractors
- Introduced new events based on prior feedback resulting in about 100% increase in student participation

### Researcher @ Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay
Jan 2011 – Jan 2012 | Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Worked on the modelling of Monopropellant Combustion under the guidance of Prof. Arindrajit Choudhury
- Modelled burning rates of Isopropyl Nitrile in MATLAB using Genetic Algorithm to optimize Arrhenius energy constant and fuel mass flow rate


## Education
### Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay

### Master's degree in Computer Science
Indian Institute of Technology, Madras


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/monika-ahirwar-26132846
- GitHub: https://github.com/monika-ahirwar

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Last updated: 2026-04-19