Featured Projects

Carbon0 Games

Carbon0 is a web app that helps people build carbon negative lifestyles for themselves and their communities.

Technologies: Django, Bootstrap 4, PostgreSQL, Heroku, AWS S3, Chart.js, Django REST Framework, Travis CI

headsetsGoodbye

I started headsetsGoodbye to research empathetic technology ideas using Tensorflow.js. We're using deep computer vision to enable intuitive human-machine interaction (GIF source: GIPHY).

Technologies: HTML, CSS, Tensorflow.js, face-api.js, Handsfree.js, and Three.js

I built this while TAing the DS/ML courses at the Dominican University of California. Its purpose was to show our students how deep learning has the power to potentially save millions of dollars (and more importantly, lives) in places like California that experience annual "fire seasons."

Technologies: Python, TensorFlow/Keras, FastAPI, Docker, Heroku

Signal Flair

While at Onshape, I built a semi-supervised ML tool to report leading indicators (out of 30+ features) that were correlated to slow performance on our server-side code (for confidentiality reasons, some of the machine learning functionality has been left out of this public repo).

Technologies: Python, Scikit-Learn, Flask, Panda-Profiling

Samaj

Samaj (or "understanding", as it means in Urdu) is a mini-machine learning framework I started in grad school as a fun side project. It includes several classic algorithms implemented from scratch in vanilla Python/NumPy, as well as some utilities. As a student, my goal is prioritizing clear, readable, and reproducible code over performance, so that more folks can better understand how AI works from a code-perspective.

Technologies: Python, NumPy, Matplotlib

Outlier Detection for Near Earth Objects (NEOs)

For the final project of CS 556 (in grad school), my colleagues Jay, Jaydeep, and myself decided to explore a variety of supervised techniques (both parametric and otherwise) for identifying potentially hazardous objects detected close to our home planet. Along the way, we learned alot about outlier detection (which is typically thought to be an unsupervised problem). The dataset we used can be found on Kaggle.

Technologies: Python, Scikit-learn, NumPy, Matplotlib, Pandas, Seaborn, Jupyter Notebook

Featured Talks

"What is NeRF?"

While taking CS 583 (Deep Learning) as a part of my Master's at Stevens, my colleague Hope Diamantopoulos and I presented a gentle introduction (see the slides, they are heavy on intuition, lots of background info and real world examples) to the original 2020 NeRF paper and some of its applications in robotics.

Machine Learning / A.I.

My expertise is in deep computer vision involving neural networks. You can trust me to provide you with the insight and implementation of the different algorithms applicable to your projects, all with a data-driven approach to problem-solving.

Backend Web

I will help craft breakthrough online experiences for your users. Allow me to translate your project requirements into scalable, maintainable, and highly-performant code using modern web frameworks.

Research Engineering

I walk the line between theory and implementation, and will help you scope problems so that they not only become opportunities to invent new products, but also avenues to publish fundamental research.

Time for a long intro! My name's Zain Raza. I am a full-time software developer, part-time grad student at Stevens, and all-the-time tech nerd.

My work focuses on building technology that closes the gap between minds and machines, with the goal of making it easier for the two to collaborate to solve hard problems. Lately, I've been focused on building the backend and machine learning features as part of PTC's SaaS Transformation. I revel in complex technical problems across the stack, especially related to computer vision and graphics - from building an empathetic robot with Tensorflow.js, to deploying a REST API to detect forest fires; and my current role in PTC, which is focused on developing MLOps pipelines and other AI-related infrastructure.

In the future, I look forward to a world where we feel more informed, empowered, and connected with each other thanks to our devices (as opposed to less).

Oh, and for hobbies I enjoy reading, playing basketball, and producing a podcast about technology, In the Making.

Connect with Me

My door is open if you want to talk about human-machine interaction, climate change, or just say hi!

The icons on this page, including those for Machine Learning, Backend Web, Research, Medium, Gmail, Linkedin, and GitHub were graciously provided by Icons8.

Hey, I'm Zain.

I am a Machine Learning Software Engineer.

I believe technology should allow people to be more human, and I write code to ensure next wave of intelligence retains our humanity.