Machine Learning Researcher
Funke Lab
HHMI Janelia Research Campus

Google Scholar

I design deep learning-based methods and develop software for instance segmentation and lineage tracing in time-lapse microscopy of developing embryos.

Research Highlights

An Investigation of Unsupervised Cell Tracking and Interactive Fine-Tuning.
Bio Image Computing Workshop, International Conference for Computer Vision (ICCV) (2025).
We introduce Attrackt—an unsupervised loss for cell tracking and combine it with active learning and low-rank fine-tuning to enable annotation-efficient, interactive model refinement.

Unsupervised Learning of Object-Centric Embeddings for Cell Instance Segmentation in Microscopy Images.
International Conference for Computer Vision (ICCV) (2023).
DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2310.08501
We introduce Cellulus—an unsupervised method for cell instance segmentation, where the core idea is to predict relative spatial offsets between image patches, thus learning object-centric embeddings, enabling cell segmentation and reducing the need for manual annotations.
GitHub

EmbedSeg: Embedding-based Instance Segmentation for Biomedical Microscopy Data.
Medical Image Analysis (2022).
DOI: 10.1016/j.media.2022.102523
We present EmbedSeg—a supervised method for cell instance segmentation, which achieves high accuracy while maintaining a low GPU memory footprint.
Slides GitHub

Registration of Multi‐modal Volumetric Images by Establishing Cell Correspondence.
Bio Image Computing Workshop, European Conference for Computer Vision (ECCV) (2020).
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-66415-2_30
We present PlatyMatch—a method for volumetric image registration, which establishes cell-to-cell correspondences across two microscopy modalities, and uses these matches to register volumetric images.
Slides GitHub

Fully Unsupervised Probabilistic Noise2Void
International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI) (2020).
DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.1911.12291
We present PPN2V—an unsupervised method for image denoising, which requires only individual noisy microscopy images and no calibration data.
Slides GitHub

CV
 

Education

2018-22    Ph.D.     Max Planck Institute (MPI-CBG)               Computer Science
2012-14    M.Sc.    Chalmers University of Technology           Applied Mechanics
2007-11    B.Tech.  Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur      Mechanical Engineering

Experience

2023 - ... | Machine Learning Researcher | HHMI Janelia Research Campus, Ashburn
Advised by Jan Funke.
Developed Cellulus—an unsupervised method for cell instance segmentation, and Attrackt—an unsupervised loss for cell tracking and interactive fine-tuning in microscopy data.

2022 - 2023 | Postdoctoral Fellow | Max Planck Institute, Dresden
Co-advised by Pavel Tomancak and Florian Jug.
Built a registration pipeline to align 3D confocal images of fixed, in situ specimens with 3D+t light-sheet microscopy movies of developing embryos.

2014 - 2017 | Computational Aero-Acoustics Engineer | Competence Center for Gas Exchange and Scania AB, Stockholm
Advised by Mikael Karlsson.
Developed a computational model leveraging thermo-acoustic interactions for energy recovery from automotive exhaust heat.

Selected
Publications

An Investigation of Unsupervised Cell Tracking and Interactive Fine-Tuning.
Bio-Image Computing Workshop. International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), 2025.

Unsupervised Learning of Object-Centric Embeddings for Cell Instance Segmentation in Microscopy Images.
International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), 2023.
DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2310.08501

Nanog organizes Transcription Bodies.
Current Biology, 2023.
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2022.11.015

EmbedSeg: Embedding-based Instance Segmentation for Biomedical Microscopy Data.
Medical Image Analysis, 2022.
DOI: 10.1016/j.media.2022.102523

Embedding-based Instance Segmentation in Microscopy.
Medical Imaging with Deep Learning (MIDL), 2021.
DOI: proceedings.mlr.press/v143/lalit21.html

Modeling expression ranks for noise-tolerant differential expression analysis of scRNA-seq data.
Genome Research, 2021.
DOI: 10.1101/gr.267070.120

Registration of Multi‐modal Volumetric Images by Establishing Cell Correspondence.
Bio-Image Computing Workshop. European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV), 2020.
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-66415-2_30

Fully Unsupervised Probabilistic Noise2Void.
International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI), 2020.
DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.1911.12291

Leveraging Self-supervised Denoising for Image Segmentation.
International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI), 2020.
DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.1911.12239

Probabilistic Noise2Void: Unsupervised Content-Aware Denoising.
Frontiers in Computer Science, 2020.
DOI: 10.3389/fcomp.2020.00005

A Note on the Applicability of Thermo-Acoustic Engines for Automotive Waste Heat Recovery.
SAE International Journal of Materials and Manufacturing, 2016.
DOI: 10.4271/2016-01-0223