John Twipraham Debbarma

Final-year dual-degree student in Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Gandhinagar, graduating in 2027, and Student Researcher at the CVIG Lab working on image appearance transfer and image decomposition. Before that, a seven-month R&D internship at Solar Defence and Aerospace: GPR, SAR, and a LiDAR + mmWave radar project for autonomous drones (obstacle detection, avoidance and SLAM) that I led from scratch, ranking 1st in the internship batch. Active practice in tabla and visual art alongside engineering.

• B.Tech + M.Tech (Dual Degree), Computer Science and Engineering

  2022 – Present

  Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar · CPI 8.12 · Final year, graduating 2027.

• Class XII — Physics, Chemistry, Maths, English, Geography

  2019 – 2021

  NVP English Medium H/S School · 93.6%

• Class X

  2018 – 2019

  NVP English Medium H/S School · 87.2%

• Student Researcher · Computer Vision, Imaging and Graphics (CVIG) Lab

  Jan 2026 – Present

  IIT Gandhinagar · Team page

  Supervisor: Prof. Shanmuganathan Raman, Head of the CSE Department

  • Working on image appearance transfer and image decomposition; interested in 3D computer vision.

• Research Associate (Software Engineer Intern)

  May 2025 – December 2025 · 7 months

  R&D Division, UAV Department · Solar Defence and Aerospace Limited, Nagpur · Certificate

  • Collaborated with multidisciplinary teams on confidential defence projects in a regulated environment:
    • Developed a Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) system for subsurface detection and mapping.
    • Contributed to a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) project for high-resolution imaging.
    • Led a project from scratch integrating LiDAR and mmWave radar for real-time obstacle detection, avoidance and SLAM on autonomous drones in disaster and emergency response; owned cross-team integration.
  • Gained expertise in defence-industry protocols, quality standards and documentation practices.
  • Replaced a semester with industry experience; learnt QML from scratch and completed my project in the first month.
  • Ranked 1st in the batch: 11/10 in one performance quadrant for outstanding execution and impact, 10/10 in the other three (graded by IIT Gandhinagar professors); earned praise from the company.
  • Named “Most popular person in the office” by my manager; strong communicator across teams.

• Many-As-One · Distributed Storage & Compute

  Mar 2026 – Present

  A from-scratch stack in Python and gRPC: a cached replicated file system, Raft and primary-backup replication, a linearizable key-value store, and a data-parallel ML trainer that checkpoints into it. Source code

• Defence-Tech R&D · SDAL

  May – Dec 2025

  Seven months in the UAV Department at Solar Defence and Aerospace — GPR, SAR, and a LiDAR + mmWave radar project for autonomous drones (obstacle avoidance and SLAM) that I led from scratch.

• Human Activity Recognition

  Jan – Apr 2024

  Smartphone sensor data sampled at 200 Hz, cleaned with Butterworth and median filters, classified with tuned Decision Trees. PCA visualisation of distinct activity clusters. Source code

• Sim Game

  Aug 2023 – Jul 2024

  Two-player avoidance of monochromatic triangles on the complete graph K₆, in C. The computer searches the full game tree with memoised minimax and adapts to the turn order you pick. Source code

Languages

C++ · C · Python · JavaScript · QML

Robotics

ROS 1 (Noetic, Melodic) · ROS 2 (Humble, Jazzy) · RViz · Gazebo

Tools

Autodesk Fusion 360 · Inventor · Arduino IDE · MATLAB · Adobe Illustrator · Photoshop · Premiere Pro · Canva · Stripo

Libraries

NumPy · SciPy · Pandas · Matplotlib · Seaborn · React · PyTorch · TensorFlow

• 1st, Mathematical Olympiad (Regional) — Tripura Mathematical Society · 2018 Certificate
• Top 16, State Level Talent Search Examination — Tripura, India Certificate
• 10/10, Japanese Language for Beginners — Recommended on LinkedIn by the course professor Recommendation

• Team Captain · ES 117 World of Engineering

  May – Jul 2023

  Prof. Udit Bhatia, IIT Gandhinagar · Project

  • Captained the team to the highest grade (10/10) in the course.
  • Led a team of 29 members, one of 10 in the course, through effective oral and written communication.

• Inter-IIT Cultural Meet 5.0 Contestant

  Jan – Mar 2023

  Hosted by IIT Madras · Contingent list · Points table

  • Represented IIT Gandhinagar: 4th among all IITs in Live Sketching.
  • Background tabla musician in Dramatics; composed, adapted and synchronised music in a 35-member team.

• Tabla — Sangeet Bivakar (Bachelor of Music) — 8-year professional course, Bangiya Sangeet Parishad, 2018 · 3rd position at State Level · 1st Division honours. Certificate
• Painting — Ankan Bivakar — 9-year professional course, Bangiya Sangeet Parishad, 2015 · 1st Division honours. Certificate