Hi, I'm Suhas!

I'm an Applied Scientist at Amazon, passionate about building AI systems that actually help people. I recently wrapped up my Ph.D. in Informatics at Penn State, where I spent my time creating AI tools for mental health therapy - think synthetic therapy conversations and empathetic small language models that can support PTSD treatment.

What gets me excited? The intersection of technology and human wellbeing. Whether it's using speech signals to detect neurological conditions, building privacy-preserving depression assessment tools, or creating sensor networks to prevent train derailments in India, I love working on problems that matter.

Suhas

Beyond the Lab

When I’m not researching, you’ll find me exploring my diverse interests:

  • Music: Creating intricate rhythmic patterns on the mridangam (a South Indian percussion instrument) - I even had a performance aired on TV back in 2006!
  • Sports: Playing cricket and watching football (huge Chelsea fan!)
  • Photography: Capturing landscapes and travel moments - check out my work here
  • Speedcubing: Solving Rubik’s cubes quickly because why not?

I’m originally from Bangalore, India, and currently based in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. Always up for a good conversation about technology, research, football, or life in general!

Let’s Connect!

Recent News

  • [Aug 2025] Thousand Voices of Trauma accepted at NeurIPS 2025 as a Spotlight paper!
  • [Aug 2025] Two papers accepted at EMNLP 2025 (one Oral, one Poster)!
  • [Jun 2025] Started as Applied Scientist at Amazon DEX ML Team
  • [May 2025] Featured in Penn State News for 3rd place win at AI Week 2025!
  • [Apr 2025] Won 3rd Place at AI Week 2025 (3rd out of 80+ posters)
  • [Apr 2025] Won Best Poster Award at MASC-SLL (1st out of 60+ posters)
  • [Mar 2025] Filed US Patent for cuff-less blood pressure monitoring method
  • [Oct 2024] Served as a Judge, 3 Minute Thesis Competition @ Penn State
  • [Oct 2024] Awarded the College of IST Graduate Student Travel Grant ($1000)!
  • [Aug-Nov 2024] Interned at Amazon AWS Health AI as Applied Scientist Intern
  • [Sep 2024] Featured on ISCA-SAC Interspeech Podcast discussing my research
  • [June 2024] Our work on LLMs for exercise motivation accepted at INTERSPEECH 2024!
  • [Apr 2024] Recognized by President Bendapudi for being awarded the NSF fellowship!
  • [Apr 2024] Served as a Judge for the 2024 Undergraduate Exhibition @ Penn State
  • [Jan 2024] Became Program Committee Member for IEEE ICHI 2024 & Paper Reviewer for CHI
  • [Dec 2023] Our work on Cuff-less BP Monitoring was accepted at ICASSP 2024!
  • [Nov 2023] Passed my Comprehensive Exam (Thesis Proposal)!
  • [May-Aug 2023] Interned at Samsung Research America developing multimodal BP monitoring
  • [May 2023] Our paper on Differential Privacy was accepted at INTERSPEECH 2023!
  • [Feb 2023] Started reviewing papers for IEEE Signal Processing Letters and ACM CUI
  • [Sep 2022] Selected for Google CS Research Mentorship Program (2022b Cohort)!
  • [Jul 2022] Selected for Google Developers Machine Learning Bootcamp 2022!
  • [Jun 2022] Awarded the NRT LINDIV Graduate Fellowship (NSF) for 2022-2023
  • [May 2022] Passed my Qualifying Exam!

Affiliations

Penn State University Amazon AWS Samsung Research America 3M Health Information Systems Indian Institute of Science PES University