Blogs

Workshop: Reinforcement Learning: Recent Trends and Future Challenges @ IISc Banglore (26th-28th February 2024)

My first ever academic event! I had a very basic idea of RL and mostly went in for the exposure. As you might have guessed, I did not understand a good number of lectures, but to an extent got a top-level overview. But this helped me understand the skills that I need to build, the mathematical concepts that I have to strengthen, and the courses I have to do and yes, this process kicked in once I started zoning out of a lecture XD. The top-level overview helped me better understand and differentiate between theoretical and application-inclined research. And wow, the lecturers were extremely smart and their presentations were so engaging and sometimes had jokes! – so cool :)

The best part of the workshop was the opportunity to interact with these amazing people. I had trouble approaching professors before this event as “I did not want to come off as dumb”, but listening to other students’ interactions during this event helped me understand that, the questions I had were legit, and even if the questions were dumb, it is ok and professors are not some sea monsters to gobble you up, but are very approachable.

Another highlight of this event, I was introduced to Category Theory and its applications to Machine Learning by Dr. Sridhar Mahadevan during his lectures (lecture slides available on his webpage). Seems like an interesting research direction, “Building Machine Learning from a Categorical theory point-of-view!”

Leap of Faith! Literally. (Mar 16, 2025)

I’ve never been great at handling uncertainty, especially the kind that’s completely out of my control and heavily luck-dependent. The week leading up to the skydive was pure chaos. Waves of nervousness hit every couple of hours. But thanks to my mom and dad, some solid friends, and yes, even ChatGPT, I got through it.

And hey I did it!!

Now, it didn’t exactly feel like a movie moment where time slows down, you wave at a passing crow, or pull off a mid-air dance move (I tried, the video looks more like I was flailing for help). It all happened too fast to really process. Most of the time, I was just trying to breathe and hoping the parachute would open.

But the experience did give me something. A slight shift in perspective? Maybe I’m now 0.01% less scared of watching horror movies. Or of missing a flight. Maybe I’ll be a bit calmer when a project falls behind schedule, when a PhD application doesn’t go as planned, or when life just doesn't follow the script I had in mind.

All this incremental bravery, hopefully not short lived maybe because my chute did open? There was a very real chance it might not have. But it did!

Maybe that’s how life works? The ghost under the bed doesn’t actually show up when you get water at 2 AM. The check-in agent might just let that extra kilo slide. Some kind professor might say “let’s do it” and take a chance on you. And even if the chute hadn’t opened... well, I took the leap. I’d have gone down trying, and then haunted all of you. Win-win?

Sometimes, I guess we need a bit of the irrational faith. Just enough to mute your overly rational brain and jump anyway. "Sometimes"

Anyway, it was fun. Not for my wallet, though.