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· Affective Computing (Emotion AI) · Cognitive Neuro-AI · Digital Health · Hybrid Intelligence

Puneet Kumar

· Assistant Professor, School of AI and Data Engineering, IIT Ropar
· Affiliated Scientist, Meditation Research Program, Harvard University & Mass General Hospital

Switch to Life Mode: from analysing emotions to managing them,
mental-health research to wellbeing, meditation research to meditating.

An Assistant Professor (AI and Data Engineering) at the Indian Institute of Technology, Ropar and an 'Affiliated Scientist' at the Meditation Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University, directed by Prof Matthew D. Sacchet.

Prior to this, was a Postdoctoral Researcher' at the Center for Machine Vision and Signal Analysis (CMVS), University of Oulu, Finland advised by Prof. Xiaobai Li and did Ph.D. at the Machine Intelligence Lab, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India, advised by Prof. R. Balasubramanian. Also worked at Georgia Institute of Technology USA, Osaka Metropolitan University Japan, Oracle IDC, Samsung R&D and PaiByTwo Pvt. Ltd. in various positions.

Research areas include Affective Computing (Emotion AI), Machine Learning, Interpretable AI, Mental Health and Cognitive Neuroscience. Please find further details in the CV.

Education

Ph.D. (Computer Science)
Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India, 2022


M.E. (Computer Science)
Thapar University, India, 2018


B.E. (Computer Science)
Manipal University, India, 2014

Work Experience

  • 'Assistant Professor' at IIT Ropar, India (Dec'25 โ€“ Present)
  • 'Affiliated Scientist' at Harvard Univ. & Mass General Hospital, USA (Apr'24 โ€“ Present)
  • 'Postdoctoral Researcher' at Univ. of Oulu, Finland (Jan'23 โ€“ Nov'25)
  • 'Co-founder, Director & CTO' at PaiByTwo Pvt. Ltd. (Nov'21 โ€“ Dec'22)
  • 'Applications Engineer' at Oracle IDC (May'14 โ€“ May'16)

News

  • Dec'25: Joined IIT Ropar as Asst. Prof.๐ŸŽ“
  • Dec'25: EDUCON'26 - Paper accepted.๐Ÿ“„
  • Jul'25: Visited 31st country.โœˆ๏ธ
  • May'25: IEEE TAFFC - Paper accepted.๐Ÿ“„
  • Apr'25: CNS'25 - Paper accepted.๐Ÿ“„
  • Dec'24: ICASSP'25 - Paper accepted.๐Ÿ“„
  • Sep'24: WACV'25 - Paper accepted.๐Ÿ“„
  • Aug-Nov'2024: Visited MIT, HarvardU, StanfordU, UCLA, UCB & GeorgiaTech.๐Ÿ›๏ธ

Projects

Details of past and ongoing projects.

Publications

Journals, Conferences, Datasets, Book-chapters and Copyright publications.

Teaching

Details of the subjects and courses taught.

Outreach

Academic and social outreach.

Collaborations

Collaborations and future openings.

Recognition

Awards, scholarships and feedback.

๐Ÿ“ข Announcements: โญ No summer internship positions are currently available. โญ PhD positions are available in Affective Computing and Computational Neuroscience. Please check IIT Roparโ€™s official PhD application page at https://www.iitrpr.ac.in/phd and apply if interested.