Hi, I’m Rakesh Vaideeswaran, currently working as an Applied Scientist II on the Amazon Artificial General Intelligence team. My work focuses on building large-scale multimodal foundation models that power the next generation of AI applications. I earned my Master’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in December 2022.
Beyond my work in AI, I like to identify myself as one among the small fraction of people in the world who can solve the 3x3 Rubik’s Cube in under 10 seconds. You can view my official Speedcubing Profile here.
Over the years, I’ve shared this passion with many kids by teaching them how to solve the cube. Trust me when I say the Rubik’s Cube will teach you a lot more than just bringing six colours together. For those who are curious to know more, I highly recommend reading this insightful article written by my friend and fellow speedcuber, Dr. Bhargav Narasimhan.
I strongly relate with the quote: "It always seems impossible until it’s done.", something that my experience with the Rubik's Cube has taught me. This continues to motivate me both personally and professionally in every task I pursue.
If you are interested in collaborating, would like to discuss research, AI, or have any question feel free to reach out to me via email at rakeshvaideeswaran.nitt@gmail.com.
- [May 2025] We launched Amazon Nova Premier, our most capable multimodal foundation model and teacher for model distillation
- [Apr 2025] Promoted to Applied Scientist II at Amazon AGI
- [Dec 2024] We launched the Amazon Nova Family of Foundation Models
- [Dec 2023] Started as an Applied Scientist on the Amazon Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) Team
- [Aug 2023] Project "Can the decoded text from automatic speech recognition effectively detect spoken grammar errors?" accepted at SLaTE workshop, Interspeech 2023
- [Feb 2023] Started as a Senior Data Scientist with the Fraud Strategy Team at Discover Financial Services
- [Dec 2022] Completed my Master's in ECE from UIUC
- [Oct 2022] "Towards Reasoning Aware Explainable VQA" accepted at TSRML workshop, NeurIPS 2022
- [May 2022] Started as an Applied Scientist Intern at Amazon Alexa
- [Oct 2021] Project "A study on native American English speech recognition by Indian listeners with varying word familiarity level" accepted at O-COCOSDA 2021
- [Aug 2021] Started my Master's in ECE (Machine Learning, Signal Processing) at UIUC
- [Jul 2021] Project "MUCS 2021" accepted at Interspeech 2021
- [Jul 2020] Started as a Junior Research Fellow at SPIRE Lab, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru
- [Apr 2019] Project "ILocUS"" accepted at IMICPW Conference, 2019
- [May 2019] Started as a Mitacs Globalink Research Scholar at IBME, UNB, Fredericton, Canada
- [Jan 2019] Awarded the Mitacs Globalink Research Scholarship
