Sidharth Talia
I am a CS Ph.D. student at the University of Washington Seattle. I’ve had the opportunity to work on a wide variety of systems--hardware and software, contribute to some really awesome open source projects--notably the MuSHR project, and I am interested in continuing my journey towards becoming a full-stack engineer and researcher. Apart from many months' worth of experience with robotics-related software engineering, I know my way around embedded systems, circuits, power electronics, and a little bit of RF. I've also won a few nitro-RC racing competitions, which require knowledge of mechanical engineering and fabrication.
If you're interested in seeing the projects I've made from the ground up, peruse my project blogs here or on the top right corner by clicking on "Project-stories". If you wish to understand how I think, understand concepts, and teach them, I recommend you to go through the control systems tutorial I wrote for first and second-year undergrad students. I prefer the approach where I start right from the basics and work my way up to the more complicated and math-related stuff.
About me
I’ve had an interest in cars from a very young age; as a kid, I would often go to the library in my school specifically to learn what makes them tick from one of those "how it works" books. In 9th grade, I bought and modified my first R/C car to have electronic stability control and soon after realized my interest in the intersection of computer science, mechanical engineering and electrical engineering.
I enjoyed the process of tinkering with the hardware and at the same time explaining the behaviors being observed mathematically. Since then, my life has just been a journey of "fuck around and find out" on repeat. Having worked at various tech-related start-ups, either as an intern or a consultant, as well as research labs, the insights I bring to the table often consider aspects from both domains simultaneously.
I am particularly interested in problems that would have a positive real impact if solved. It is a privilege for me to have access to massive computing resources when I work on the DLive self-driving car project at IIT Delhi. Sadly this is not a privilege shared by many and was not a privilege for me four years ago. As such, my core interest lies in the area of minimal cognition; the idea of doing more with less. It effectively forces one to consider the fundamental aspects of the problem at hand and exploit any and all mathematical properties in the problem structure to gain computational advantage.
I also take an interest in teaching and have prepared tutorials/conducted classes for undergrad students in the past.