masud

Md Masudur Rahman


I am a Ph.D. Candidate in the department of Computer Science at the Purdue University. My advisor is Professor Yexiang Xue.

I am interested in Artificial Intelligence, Reinforcement Learning, and Robotics. My work focuses on designing and developing intelligent learning agents capable of making interpretable, critical decisions under uncertain conditions. Currently, my efforts are concentrated on the issue of generalization in reinforcement learning. I aim to develop algorithms that remain robust against the effects of confounders, with the ultimate goal of using these algorithms to solve real-world tasks.
I am exploring the use of foundational models as a source of prior knowledge in reinforcement learning algorithms. I am investigating how this can enable RL in various practical applications, such as surgical robotics and medical imaging, including the automation of burn injury treatment.

I completed my M.S. from the department of Computer Science at the University of Virginia in 2018. Before joining the University of Virginia, I worked as a Lecturer in the Computer Science and Engineering department at the BRAC University. I completed my B.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) in 2013.

Email: rahman64@purdue.edu
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Publications

[W3] Accelerating Policy Gradient by Estimating Value Function from Prior Computation in Deep Reinforcement Learning. [pdf]

Workshop on Reincarnating Reinforcement Learning (RRL) at ICLR 2023. workshop
[C14] Bootstrap Advantage Estimation for Policy Optimization in Reinforcement Learning. [arXiv] [pdf] [video]
ICMLA 2022, In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA), 2022. conference
[C13] Bootstrap State Representation using Style Transfer for Better Generalization in Deep Reinforcement Learning. [arXiv] [pdf][video]
ECML-PKDD 2022, In Proceedings of the 2022 European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (ECML-PKDD), 2022. conference
[C12] ASAP: A Semi-Autonomous Precise robotic framework for remote surgery under delays.
MHSRS 2022 , In Military Health System Research Symposium, 2022. Abstract Paper (Oral Presentation)
[C11] Sequential Prediction with Logic Constraints for Surgical Robotic Activity Recognition. [pdf] [code] [video]
RO-MAN 2021, In Proceedings of the 30th IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication - 2021, 8 pages. conference
[C10] Dexterous Skill Transfer between Surgical Procedures for Teleoperated Robotic Surgery. [pdf]
RO-MAN 2021, In Proceedings of the 30th IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication - 2021, 7 pages. conference
[C9] A Semi-autonomous Robotic Framework for Remote Surgery under Delays.
MHSRS 2021 , In Military Health System Research Symposium, 2021. Abstract Paper (Oral Presentation)
[C8] DESERTS: Delay-Tolerant Semi-Autonomous Robot Teleoperation for Surgery. [pdf]
ICRA 2021, In Proceedings of the 2021 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation - 2021, 8 pages. conference
[J3] SARTRES: A Semi-Autonomous Robot TeleopeRation Environment for Surgery. [pdf]
AECAI, TCIV 2020, Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering: Imaging & Visualization Journal - 2020, AE-CAI | CARE | OR 2.0 Joint MICCAI Workshop - 2020, 14 pages. journal
[J2] From the DESK (Dexterous Surgical Skill) to the Battlefield - A Robotics Exploratory Study
MHSRS Journal (Military Medicine) 2020, In Military Health System Research Symposium (Military Medicine), 2020 23 pages. journal
[C7] ASTRO: A Semi-Autonomous Telemedicine Robot for Operative Surgery.
MHSRS 2020, In Military Health System Research Symposium, 2020. 3 pages. Abstract Paper
[C6] Transferring Dexterous Surgical Skill Knowledge between Robots for Semi-autonomous Teleoperation. [pdf]
Ro-Man 2019, In Proceedings of the 28th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, 2019, 6 pages. conference

[W2] Morality in Decision-Making: A Causal Approach. [video]

MoDeM 2019, RLDM Workshop on Moral Decision Making [Link] , 2019. talk workshop

[C5] DESK: A Robotic Activity Dataset for Dexterous Surgical Skills Transfer to Medical Robots. [pdf] [arXiv]

IROS 2019, In Proceedings of the 2019 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 8 pages. conference
[C4] Toward Optimal Selection of Information Retrieval Models for Software Engineering Tasks. [pdf]
SCAM 2019, In Proceedings of the 19th IEEE International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, 2019, 12 pages. conference

[J1] Recommending GitHub Projects for Developer Onboarding. [pdf] [link]

IEEE Access 2018, 13 pages. journal

[C3] Evaluating How Developers Use General-Purpose Web-Search for Code Retrieval. [pdf] [arXiv] [slides] [code]

MSR 2018, In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories, 11 pages. conference

[C2] Which Similarity Metric to Use for Software Documents? A study on Information Retrieval based Software Engineering Tasks. [pdf] [poster]

ICSE 2018 Companion, In Proceedings of 40th International Conference on Software Engineering Companion, 2018, 2 pages. conference

[W1] Finding Similar Projects in GitHub using Word2Vec and WMD. [slides]

NL+SE @FSE 2016 talk workshop

[C1] Topic Model based Privacy Protection in Personalized Web Search. [pdf] [code]

SIGIR 2016, In Proceedings of the 39th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, 2016, 4 pages. conference

Technical Report:

[T1] A Case Study on the Impact of Similarity Measure on Information Retrieval based Software Engineering Tasks. [pdf][arXiv]

Technical Report 2018, 22 pages. technical report

Talks

Teaching

Teaching Assistant Instructor

Mentoring

I am fortunate to work with following students in various capacities.

Service

Conference Reviewer Journal Reviewer Sub-reviewer