Mr. Tarun Saini

Assistant Professor

Mr. Tarun Saini is currently working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering. He completed his M.Tech. in Information Technology at the National Institute of Technology Karnataka Surathkal (NITK Surathkal) in 2026 after securing GATE CS AIR-1594, and his Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech.) in Computer Science & Engineering in 2022. During his postgraduate studies, he also served as a Teaching Assistant, mentoring undergraduate students in laboratory sessions and academic coursework.

Prior to joining academia, he worked as a Research & Development Intern at Bosch, where he contributed to research in autonomous driving and intelligent perception systems. His work involved developing efficient AI models for real-world automotive applications, with an emphasis on multimodal perception, Vision-Language-Action (VLA) systems, and Language Models development.

His research interests lie at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and intelligent autonomous systems, spanning Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Computer Vision, Multimodal Learning, Vision-Language Models (VLMs), Vision-Language-Action (VLA) Models, Large and Small Language Models (LLMs/SLMs), Natural Language Processing, Representation Learning, Sensor Fusion, and Bird's Eye View (BEV) Perception. His long-term goal is to build intelligent multimodal systems capable of understanding complex environments and making reliable decisions in real-world applications.

His flagship research project, DriveSimulatorVLA, is a Vision-Language-Action framework for autonomous driving that integrates Camera-LiDAR-Radar fusion, Bird's Eye View perception, end-to-end trajectory prediction, and Vision-Language reasoning, built on a Qwen2-0.5B backbone with LoRA fine-tuning and deployed within the CARLA simulator. His other projects includes Small Language Model (SLM) built from scratch to study modern transformer-based language models, a Hybrid Chaotic Image Encryption System combining chaos theory and cryptography, and a Distributed Resource Management Database System covering fragmentation and distributed query processing.

Tarun believes in developing a strong theoretical foundation before implementing solutions, emphasizing first-principles understanding, mathematical derivations, and model interpretability alongside practical deployment. He is proficient in Python, C++, and SQL, with hands-on expertise in PyTorch, TensorFlow, OpenCV, LoRA fine-tuning, Vision Transformers, and the CARLA simulator. During his GATE preparation, he has also mentored students online, where he is recognized for explaining complex concepts in a simple, intuitive, and mathematically grounded manner.

As an Assistant Professor, Tarun continues to pursue research in Artificial Intelligence, focusing on developing robust, efficient, and intelligent multimodal systems capable of operating in real-world environments, while mentoring students in Vision-Language-Action Models, Autonomous Driving, Foundation Models (SLMs/LLMs), Computer Vision, and Multimodal Learning.

Phone : +919354623266

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LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/tarunsaini2001