NordSTAR is growing

In the top photo you can see our new members in the presented order, from top left: Andreas Huber, Barbora Hudcová, Heine Aabø, Ioannis Adamopoulos, and Ramesh Upreti. From bottom left: Kristian Wold, Sebastian Testanière Overskott, Shailendra Bhandari, and Sushil Acharya.

Andreas Huber

Andreas has a background in Computer Science and Software Engineering, and completed his Master's Degree in Informatics: programming and systems architecture at the University of Oslo (UiO).

After finishing his degree he wanted to take a peek into the field of Artificial Intelligence, and joined us in NordSTAR. He will be working with us as a research assistant until the end of October and is writing a survey on AI tools in journalism.

Barbora Hudcová

Barbora is a visiting researcher in NordSTAR. She is staying in Oslo for three months, and will be with us until the end of December 2021. Barbora has a background in mathematics, more concretely in abstract algebra and theoretical cryptography.

In NordSTAR she is studying the computational capacity of discrete dynamical systems, mainly concentrating on cellular automata. The goal is to analyse which dynamical systems can be used as efficient computational models.

There are just a few teams in the world doing active basic research in the topics of discrete dynamical systems and computation. One of them is Stefano Nichele’s team at OsloMet. Thus, I am very excited to collaborate with them. – Barbora Hudcová

Heine Aabø

Heine Aabø joined us in October and will be working on a six month project that involves Quantum Networks. He has a master’s degree in Computational Physics from UiO and joined NordSTAR because he wanted to work with Quantum Computers.

Ioannis Adamopoulos

Ioannis is also one of our new research assistants who will be working with us until the mid of December this year. He is a physicist and now a second-year master student in Data Science at the ACIT programme. Ioannis will be working on Quantum Computing and Cellular Automata, bridging the areas of Quantum Artificial Intelligence and Biologically Inspired Computer Systems.

I wanted to work with NordSTAR because I am fascinated by Quantum Computers, and believe that they are a powerful and very promising tool in artificial intelligence. – Ioannis Adamopoulos

Kristian Wold

Kristian Wold is our new Ph.D. candidate and a teaching assistant that will be with us for four years. He will be working on Quantum Computing in the context of artificial intelligence.

– One of the research questions I will investigate is whether artificial intelligence and machine learning can help improve the results of Quantum Computers, which promise to solve specific problems much faster than normal computers, says Kristian.

– However, today's quantum computers are ridden with noise and errors and are not very useful in practice. Using machine learning, I hope to increase the quality of the results and make quantum computing a more useful and applicable technology.

Kristian has a bachelor's degree in physics and a master's degree in computational physics from the University of Oslo (UiO).

– I like combining physical theory, numerical simulations and machine learning to solve problems. In particular, I have studied how quantum computers can be used for implement machine learning models.

I wanted to work for NordSTAR because they offered a very interesting research project very close to my interests; investigating how quantum computing and machine learning can be leveraged to improve each other in various ways. The community for such interests is still very young in Norway, but NordSTAR has proved to be one of its first advocates, which is very exciting! – Kristian Wold

Ramesh Upreti

Ramesh Upreti is a research assistant in NordSTAR and has been working on a literature review of security and privacy issues in machine learning. He will now continue the work in the field of Trustworthy AI, as an extension of his previous work.

Ramesh did his bachelor's degree in Nepal in Computer Applications. After this degree, he joined Deerwalk Inc. as an Associate Software Engineer. He then moved to Norway to pursue his master’s degree in Network and System Administration (NSA) from the University of Oslo (UiO).

During his master’s degree, he worked as a Teaching Assistant for three courses. From September 2019 to December 2020, he worked as a self-funded Research Assistant in OsloMet under the supervision of professor Anis Yazidi and professor Hårek Haugerud.

He is now taking a master's degree in Data Science at OsloMet and is involved in research activities as well.

– Why did you want to join NordSTAR?

– NordSTAR is one of the recent projects started with the aim of building sustainable and trustworthy AI tools. While the majority of companies and people are focused on developing and applying machine learning models to different sectors, NordSTAR has taken the responsibility of building trustworthy AI tools which are the utmost requirements of the current market, says Ramesh.

– As a machine learning and artificial intelligence enthusiast I can realize the importance of this project and the impact/benefit it will provide to society. It is my pleasure to get an opportunity to contribute to this project and at the same time, I believe this is a great learning experience for me.

Sebastian Testanière Overskott

Sebastian is a first-year master's student in mathematical modeling, with a bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering/Science. He will be working as a research assistant until the mid of December. Sebastian will assist on an ongoing project to see if evolutionary algorithms are any good at solving quantum states and be used to find a highly entangled state for qubits.

I'm really fascinated by both quantum computing and machine learning. Joining NordSTAR gives me opportunity to get more in depth in those fields and get “hands on” experience in AI research. – Sebastian Testanière Overskott

Shailendra Bhandari

Shailendra has a background in Nuclear and Energy Physics, and is currently a master student in Data Science at the Applied Computer and Information Technology (ACIT) programme at OsloMet. He has joined NordSTAR as a research assistant and will be with us until the mid of December this year.

Shailendra will be working with IBM Q-Experience and Evolutionary algorithms for finding the best entangled data.

– I have been fascinated by the incredible features of Computer science, especially artificial intelligence. It is my inquisitive mind that always seeks answers to the state-of-art algorithm in AI, says Shailendra.

– Since NordSTAR is a center of research excellence that aims to establish a new paradigm in the research on sustainable and trustworthy artificial intelligence, I choose to work with NordSTAR

Sushil Acharya

Sushil is our fourth newly hired research assistant, and will be working with us until the end of the semester. He is developing a tool to digitize 7000 ECGs stored in the databases of Akershus University Hospital (AHUS), this is developed for posterior analysis with AI tools.

Sushil has a masters degree in Mathematics and Physics from the University of Stavanger, and is currently a master student in Data Science at OsloMet.

In NordSTAR we can use our skills to contribute to the various ongoing projects and steer them in the right direction. We also get supervision from highly skilled professors, and this is the platform to enhance our skills as well. – Sushil Acharya