Taraneh Ghandi

Msc. Computer Engineering Student

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Taraneh Ghandi

I am a PhD student studying Computational Science and Engineering at McMaster University, currently focusing on Multimodal LLMs, Generative AI, Semi structured data and Graph Neural Networks
Click the button below to know more about me!

Hi and Welcome! Click each item to expand its contents.

Here are just a few of my projects.
I enjoy working on projects which involve Machine Vision, 3D Modelling and Rendering, or projects that revolve around Computational Musicology.
I also love working on UI/UX design for my own projects. It's one of the parts I look forward to!

Showering AI

- Painkillers are the "Mute Notifications" option for the body.

- If humans colonize the moon, it will probably attract retirement homes as the weaker gravity will allow the elderly to feel stronger.

- They say with pessimism you'll either be correct or pleasantly surprised, but that’s an awfully optimistic way to see pessimism.


These are all a bot's words, not mine!

I trained a GPT-2 model on top posts I scraped from the subreddit: r/showerthoughts. Its generated "thoughts" are eerily natural-sounding, and they actually make sense??
I'm planning on sharing this on hugging face, and also make a twitter bot for it that tweets one of these epiphanies every day.

Also, the pixel-art artwork is done by myself ~ :D

Grasp Detection

My final B.Sc. project was grasp type detection for an artificial, robotic hand, using deep learning and machine vision.
I trained YOLOv3 on a custom dataset that I collected and manually labeled myself.
The custom dataset was obtained from Open Images V6 and contained 13,144 objects.

A video of the model's performance on a test video is shown here:

Delta Controller

During my internship, I worked on the Delta robot in the robotics lab in Ferdowsi University of Mashhad.

I programmed the real-time controller for the robot, using the QT framework in Linux.
The Delta Robot is a parallel robot with three parallelogram arms, typically used in pick-and-place tasks in the industry.
Delta’s signature features are its high acceleration and speed.

Since the Delta robot needs to execute commands real-time, it was necessary to build the controller in Linux.

TwoStack

One of my first projects ever, "TwoStack":A game-based learning software designed for students of computer engineering as an assignment, developed for Windows, Linux, and Android platforms.
It's been used as an assignment since 2018, and still used today! I'm happy I left this tiny gift in the cs department. Other than familiarizing myself with QT, I really had fun designing the visual elements and UI!

Programming languages and softwares I know my way around. Click each to expand its content.

  • Linux and Git
  • Python <3
  • C, C++, and limited knowledge of C#
  • Java
  • MATLAB
  • QT and QML
  • Javascript
  • PHP
  • HTML5
  • CSS
  • MySQL
  • Laravel
  • Bootstrap 4
  • Android programming
  • Cross-platform programming
  • Game design and development
  • Basic knowledge of Prolog

3D Rendering and modeling:

  • Blender
  • Rhino3D
  • KeyShot
  • Autodesk 3Ds Max

Digital Painting:

  • Krita
  • Clip Studio Paint
  • Corel Graphics Suite

Typesetting:

  • Latex
  • Office

  • Unity
  • QT Creator
  • Android Studio
  • Adobe Premiere Pro
  • KDenLive

I have published these until now:
Deep Learning Approaches on Image Captioning: A Review Taraneh Ghandi, Hamidreza Pourreza, Hamidreza Mahyar. 38 pages, ACM Computing Surveys, 2023.
and also:
Revisiting 2-3 Red-Black Trees with a Pedagogically Sound yet Efficient Deletion Algorithm: The Parity-Seeking Delete Algorithm which is currently under review.

I am obsessed with painting and art, digital art, music, and VTUBING!
Here you see two of video thumbnails I made with myself as a VROID model. Unfortunately I didn't get to make more VTUBING content.
Some softwares that I enjoy working with are:

  • Corel Photo Paint,
  • Corel Draw,
  • Clip Studio Paint,
  • Krita (best of all worlds, for free~),
  • Paint Tool SAI,
  • Adobe Premiere Pro,
  • and KdenLive.

I also enjoy Video Editing, Animating, VTUBING, and Playing the Violin (Classical Persian Music).
Do check out my YouTube channel, too!

I have worked as TA for subjects like: Data Structures, Discrete Mathematics and Compiler Design.

I have also interned in FUM Robotics Lab, and developed "FUM DELTA Controller":
Controlling software for FUM Delta robot, enabling the users to interact with the robot via the user-friendly interface developed.
Here is a pic of where I used to work. The lab has now relocated to a much fancier place in the faculty (the second pic), but back then our division was really small and uncomfortable (first pic)!

  • Ranking 1st among all M.Sc. students of computer science,
    artificial intelligence and robotics, in terms of GPA.
  • Selected as a Talented Student by Ferdowsi University of Mashhad
    to pursue M.Sc. without an entrance exam.
  • Ranked 5th among 120 B.Eng. students of computer engineering
    in terms of GPA.
  • Selected as The Best Intern of the Computer Engineering Department,
    Dec 2019.
  • Peer Reviewer: The International Conference on Computer and Knowledge Engineering (ICCKE) (August 2022)
  • Peer Reviewer: Entropy (August 2022)
  • Peer Reviewer: Artificial intelligence Review (July 2022)
  • English: Professional working proficiency
  • Persian: Native or bilingual proficiency