Dr. Ritesh Kumar, Principal Scientist

Central Scientific Instruments Organisation, CSIR, Chandigarh 160030,(www.csio.res.in) India.
kr.riteshrai@gmail.com riteshkr@csio.res.in

Hi I'm Ritesh Kumar working as a Principal Scientist with CSIR-Central Scientific Instruments Organisation Chandigarh. I'm passionate about Statistical Analysis and Machine Intelligence,responsible for teaching, Data Science and Machine Learning both applications and theory, Data Structures and algorithm analysis,Introduction to computing and Compiler design.

Research

My research interests and projects revolve around three categories.

Understanding Chemical space of odorants

Fragrance and aroma are an essential part of the animal kingdom. Yet, the relationship between the chemical structure of odorants and their percepts remain largely elusive. There are many unanswered questions in this domain in terms of clear identification, differentiation and mathematical definition of the olfactory space. I want to understand the concept of olfactory space, the concept of primaries if at all there is one in this space, and the interaction of physical and receptor space. For this, I intend to use machine learning and neuroscientific techniques. I collaborate with people in neuroscience and mathematics in this research.

Predicting human olfactory perception from chemical features of odor molecules
Understanding the Odour Spaces: A Step towards Solving Olfactory Stimulus-Percept Problem
DeepFragrance a peek into the olfactory chemical space

Odor Source Localisation Techniques

Odor source localisation has been studied extensively in biology, e.g. moth mate seeking, lobster foraging, mosquito host tracking. Research in autonomous, robotic odor localisation has mimicked these behaviours. It is relevant for detecting wildfires, oil spills, industrial gas leaks, and for search and rescue in disaster management etc. I work on designing better algorithms/techniques using existing hardware and different sensing modalities. I collaborate with people from robotics, sensor development in this area.

Consensus-Based Odor Source Localization by Multiagent Systems Under Resource Constraints
Cooperative control of multi-agent systems to locate source of an odor
Consensus-Based Odor Source Localisation by Multiagent Systems

Electronic Nose and Tongue system development

I have a keen interest in electronic nose and tongue system development which can be used for various application such as quality quantification of food items and early diagnosis of plant pest attack. I have worked with various companies in this area.

A Simple Electronic Tongue
Circuit arrangement to suppress crosstalk in chemo-resistive sensor arrays
Towards biological plausibility of electronic noses: A spiking neural network based approach for tea odour classification

I have also worked on the design of human opinion dynamics based optimization algorithm. This work was published in Nature, Scientific Reports and the software is open sourced here.

Other ongoing and completed research

Using Network analysis to understand relationship between spices and their health effects (with Rishemjit Kaur, Lav Varshney).
Bout detection and plant volatiles differentiation using enose (with Michael Schmuker and Sam Sutton).
What million farmers say: Understanding Kisan Call Centre data (with Rishemjit Kaur, Sudarshan Iyengar).
Hand-held system for plant health monitoring based on color measurements of leaves and machine learning (with Rishemjit Kaur, Shambo Roy).
Evaluation of Plant health monitoring systems using machine learning (with Varinderpal Singh, Rishemjit Kaur).
Machine Learning software for classification of hemolytic potency of peptides (with G P S Raghava, Kumardeep Chaudhary).
Machine Learning algorithm development for early and late stage cancer patients based on TCGA gene expres- sion data (with G P S Raghava).

Experience

Principal Scientist

Central Scientific Instruments Organisation.

2020 – Present

Royal Society Newton Fellow

University of Hertfordshire, UK.

2019 – 2022

Senior Scientist

Central Scientific Instruments Organisation.

2015 – 2020

Scientist

Central Scientific Instruments Organisation.

2011 – 2015

Intern

Citrix R&D India.

2009 (Jan)–2009 (July)

Education

Academy of Scientific & Innvovative Research

PhD (submitted 2017)

2019

Academy of Scientific & Innvovative Research

M.Tech. (Advanced Instrumentation)

2011

B.E. (CSE)

Manipal Institute of Technology

2009

Projects

I have worked in government and industry sponsored projects involving various domains of technology as PI, Co-PI and member. These projects are in collaboration with researchers across domains and institutions.

2021	Design of food recommender system using machine learning	FoodPairing, Belgium	PI	Rs. 16.9 Lakhs
2021	Bitterness Masking evaluation of Green Tea using machine learning	TATA Consumer Prod- ucts Ltd., Pune, India	PI	Rs. 8.5 Lakhs
2019	DeepFragrance: Artificial Intelligence Methods for designing fragrant molecules	Royal Society, UK	PI	100,500 GBP
2021	CSIR-Digital Food Safety Portal System 2.0 Digital Food Safety Portal, analytics and Digitalization of the Indian Burden of Foodborne Diseases, Chemicals Risk Assessment as well as food design using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Tools	CSIR, India	Co-PI	Rs. 1.47 Cr
2018	Smartphone imaging aided point of care dipstick platform for heavy metals sensing in water	DST, India	Co-PI	Rs. 25 Lakhs
2015	Development of Integrated Technological Solutions for Security and Operations based on UV Sensor Technologies	CSIR, NMITLI	Co-PI	Rs. 36 Lakhs
2012	Biomimetic Artificial Organoleptic Systems	CSIR, India	Co-PI	Rs. 60 Lakhs
2020	Characterizing Risk Indicators to cause Anaemia Prevalence among young Children and Adolescents in BRICS countries using Artificial Intelligence	DST, India	Member	Rs. 48 Lakhs
2018	Data logging system for Deg Bhapka process monitor- ing	FFDC, Kannuaj	Member	Rs. 1 Lakh
2018	Identification of volatiles released from rancid cashews and their correlation/characterization	nanoPix ISS (P) Ltd., Hubli	Member	Rs. 1.5 Lakhs
2017	Upgradation of Existing Iodine Value Meter	M/S Vaisheshika Sys- tems Ltd., Ambala	Member	Rs. 1.36 Lakhs
2015	WSN for explosive detection	PSA Office, India	Member	Rs. 60 Lakhs

Awards & Fellowships

2019 Royal Society Newton Fellowship (awarded to 40 early career researchers all over the world in an year).
2019 IC2S2 travel fellowship to present research work.
2018 Sakura science exchange fellowship by JST, Japan.
2016 Among the winning teams for grand challenge awarded by IIT Patna (hand held instrument for nitrogen mapping).
2016 Among the winning teams (ViResPred) for presenting work at RECOMB/ISCB Conference by DARPA.
2013 Volkswagen Foundation, Germany sponsorship to present research work at OdorSpaces 2013.
2009 Quick Hire Fellowship for MTech by CSIR, India.
2008 Qualified in Google Code jam.
2002 Ramakrishna Mission Vidyapith scholarship for secondary and senior secondary education.

Publications

Refereed research & papers

1. Bhondekar, A. P., R. Kaur, R. Kumar, R. Vig, and P. Kapur (2011). A novel approach using Dynamic Social Impact The- ory for optimization of impedance-Tongue (iTongue). Chemometrics and Intelligent Laboratory Systems 109(1), 65 – 76.

2. Kaur, R., R. Kumar, A. Gulati, C. Ghanshyam, P. Kapur, and A. P. Bhondekar (2012). Enhancing electronic nose perfor- mance: A novel feature selection approach using dynamic social impact theory and moving window time slicing for classification of Kangra orthodox black tea (Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze). Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical 166, 309 – 319.

3. Kumar, R., A. P. Bhondekar, R. Kaur, S. Vig, A. Sharma, and P. Kapur (2012). A Simple Electronic Tongue. Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical.

4. kumar, R., R. Kaur, and A. P. Bhondekar (2012). SITO LIBRARY https://mloss.org/software/view/457/.

5. Saurabh, S. and R. Kumar (2012). Global reduction in measles mortality(Correspondence). The Lancet 380(9850), 1303.

6. Kaur, R., R. Kumar, A. P. Bhondekar, and P. Kapur (2013). Human opinion dynamics: An inspiration to solve complex optimization problems. Scientific reports 3(1), 1–7.

7. Kumar, R., R. Kaur, A. P. Bhondekar, and P. Kapur (2014). Understanding the odour network. Flavour 3(Suppl 1), P7.

8. Macaš, M., A. P. Bhondekar, R. Kumar, R. Kaur, J. Kuzilek, V. Gerla, L. Lhotská, and P. Kapur (2014). Binary social im- pact theory based optimization and its applications in pattern recognition. Neurocomputing 132, 85–96.

9. Kaur, R., R. Kumar, A. P. Bhondekar, R. Suzuki, and T. Arita (2015). Effects of Topological Variations on Opinion Dy- namics Optimizer. In: International Conference in Swarm Intelligence. Springer, Cham, pp.3 – 13.

10. Kumar, R., R. Kaur, B. Auffarth, and A. P. Bhondekar (2015). Understanding the Odour Spaces: A Step towards Solving Olfactory Stimulus-Percept Problem. PLoS ONE 10(10).

11. Kumar, R., R. Kaur, and A. P. Bhondekar (2015). “The Smell Network”. In: Multidisciplinary Social Networks Research Communications in Computer and Information Science, (http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-662- 48319-0_38). Vol. 540. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, pp.460 – 469.

12. Sarkar, S. T., A. P. Bhondekar, M. Macaš, R. Kumar, R. Kaur, A. Sharma, A. Gulati, and A. Kumar (2015). Towards bio- logical plausibility of electronic noses: A spiking neural network based approach for tea odour classification. Neural Networks 71, 142 – 149.

13. Sharma, G., S. Kumar, A. Kumar, A. Sharma, R. Kumar, R. Kaur, and A. P. Bhondekar (2015). Development of lipid membrane based taste sensors for electronic tongue. Procedia Computer Science 70, 146 – 152.

14. Bhardwaj, N., R. Kumar, R. Verma, A. Jindal, and A. P. Bhondekar (2016). Decoding algorithm for color QR code: a mobile scanner application. In: 2016 international conference on recent trends in information technology (ICRTIT). IEEE, pp.1 – 6.

15. Chaudhary, K., R. Kumar, S. Singh, A. Tuknait, A. Gautam, D. Mathur, P. Anand, G. C. Varshney, and G. P. Raghava (2016). A web server and mobile app for computing hemolytic potency of peptides. Scientific reports 6(1), 1 – 13.

16. Chowdhury, S. R., R. Kumar, R. Kaur, A. Sharma, and A. P. Bhondekar (2016). Quality assessment of engine oil: an impedance spectroscopy based approach. In: 2016 IEEE Uttar Pradesh Section International Conference on Electrical, Computer and Electronics Engineering (UPCON). IEEE, pp.608 – 612.

17. Kumar, R., R. Kaur, A. P. Bhondekar, and G. P. S. Raghava (2016). SMELL AND LANGUAGE: DATACENTRIC APPROACH TO PREDICTING SMELL OF A MOLECULE. Journal of Digital Olfaction Society 4(1).

18. Kumar, S., S. Bagchi, S. Prasad, A. Sharma, R. Kumar, R. Kaur, J. Singh, and A. P. Bhondekar (2016). Bacteriorhodopsin–ZnO hybrid as a potential sensing element for low-temperature detection of ethanol vapour. Beilstein journal of nanotechnology 7(1), 501 – 510.

19. Bhalla, S., K. Chaudhary, R. Kumar, M. Sehgal, H. Kaur, S. Sharma, and G. P. Raghava (2017). Gene expression-based biomarkers for discriminating early and late stage of clear cell renal cancer. Scientific reports 7(1), 1–13.

20. Keller, A., R. C. Gerkin, Y. Guan, A. Dhurandhar, G. Turu, B. Szalai, J. D. Mainland, Y. Ihara, C. W. Yu, R. Wolfinger, R. Kumar, et al. (2017). Predicting human olfactory perception from chemical features of odor molecules. Science 355(6327), 820–826.

21. Sinha, A., R. Kaur, R. Kumar, and A. Bhondekar (2017). A cooperative control framework for odor source localization by multi-agent systems.

22. Sinha, A., R. Kaur, R. Kumar, and A. P. Bhondekar (2017). Cooperative control of multi-agent systems to locate source of an odor. arXiv preprint arXiv:1711.03819.

23. Chowdhury, S. R., A. P. Bhondekar, R. Kumar, S. Bagchi, R. Kaur, and V. Karar (2018). Circuit arrangement to suppress crosstalk in chemo-resistive sensor arrays. IET Science, Measurement & Technology 12(8), 1039 – 1046.

24. Fourati, S., A. Talla, M. Mahmoudian, J. G. Burkhart, R. Klén, R. Henao, T. Yu, Z. Aydın, K. Y. Yeung, M. E. Ahsen, R. Kumar, et al. (2018). A crowdsourced analysis to identify ab initio molecular signatures predictive of susceptibility to viral infection. Nature communications 9(1), 1–11.

25. Gaurav, K., A. Kumar, R. Kumar, and A. P. Bhondekar (2018). Exploring robot behavior in search of a chemical source. In: 2018 International Conference on Intelligent Autonomous Systems (ICoIAS). IEEE, pp.146 – 149.

26. Kumar, A., J. Saxena, R. Kumar, and R. Kaur (2018). MAI Mitigation in MC-CDMA Systems Using Social Impact Based Wireless Communication Algorithm. Wireless Personal Communications 101(3), 1765 – 1786.

27. Kumar, R., R. Kaur, A. P. Bhondekar, and G. P. Raghava (2018). “Human Opinion Inspired Feature Selection Strat- egy for Predicting the Pleasantness of a Molecule”. In: Advanced Computational and Communication Paradigms. Springer, pp.197 – 205.

28. Kumar, R. and M. Schmuker (2019). DeepFragrance a peek into the olfactory chemical space. In: ECRO 2019, Trieste - Italy. https://www.ecro.online/app/download/9978832670/ECRO2019_Book%20of . . .

29. Sinha, A., R. Kumar, R. Kaur, and A. P. Bhondekar (2019). Consensus-Based Odor Source Localization by Multiagent Systems. IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics 49(12), 4450 – 4459. . .

30. Sinha, A., R. Kumar, R. Kaur, and R. K. Mishra (2019). Consensus-Based Odor Source Localization by Multiagent Sys- tems Under Resource Constraints. IEEE transactions on cybernetics 50(7), 3254–3263. . .

31. Chowdhury, S. R., A. P. Bhondekar, R. Kumar, S. Bagchi, R. Kaur, and V. Karar (2020). Analysis of a Novel Circuit Ar- rangement to Suppress Crosstalk in 2-D Resistive Sensor Arrays. Circuits, Systems, and Signal Processing 39(3), 1227 – 1243.

32. Kumar, R., R. Kaur, and M. Schmuker (2020a). DeepFragrance: An embedding based approach to solve olfactory stimulus percept problem. In: ISOT, Achems 2020.

33. Kumar, R., R. Kaur, and M. Schmuker (2020b). DeepFragrance: Embedded molecular representations for searching fragrance-like molecules. In: ECRO 2020.

34. Parma, V., K. Ohla, M. G. Veldhuizen, M. Y. Niv, C. E. Kelly, A. J. Bakke, K. W. Cooper, C. Bouysset, N. Pirastu, M. Dibat- tista, R. Kumar, et al. (2020). More than smell—COVID-19 is associated with severe impairment of smell, taste, and chemesthesis. Chemical Senses 45(7), 609–622.

35. Saurabh, S., R. Kumar, M. K. Gupta, P. Bhardwaj, V. L. Nag, M. K. Garg, and S. Misra (2020). Prolonged persistence of SARS-CoV-2 in the upper respiratory tract of asymptomatic infected individuals. QJM: An International Journal of Medicine 113(8), 556–560.

36. Saurabh, S., R. Kumar, N. Kumar, P. Bhardwaj, V. L. Nag, M. K. Garg, and S. Misra (2020a). Dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 transmission among evacuees quarantined at Jaisalmer, India.

37. Saurabh, S., R. Kumar, N. Kumar, P. Bhardwaj, V. L. Nag, M. K. Garg, and S. Misra (2020b). Dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 transmission among Indian nationals evacuated from Iran. Disaster medicine and public health preparedness, 1–7.

38. Adhikari, P., R. Kumar, S. Iyengar, and R. Kaur (2021). What a million Indian farmers say?: A crowdsourcing-based method for pest surveillance. In: Proceedings of KDD Workshop on Data-driven Humanitarian Mapping, 27th ACM SIGKDD Conference, New York, USA.

39. Gopalakrishnan, K., A. Sharma, N. Emanuel, P. K. Prabhakar, and R. Kumar (2021). Sensors for Non-Destructive Qual- ity Evaluation of Food. Food Chemistry: The Role of Additives, Preservatives and Adulteration, 397–449.

40. Kumar, R., M. Singh, P. Singh, V. Parma, K. Ohla, S. B. Olsson, V. Saini, J. Rani, K. Kishore, P. Kumari, et al. (2021). Leveraging machine learning and self-administered tests to predict COVID-19: An olfactory and gustatory dysfunc- tion assessment through crowd-sourced data in India. medRxiv.

41. Parma, V., K. Ohla, M. G. Veldhuizen, M. Y. Niv, C. E. Kelly, A. J. Bakke, K. W. Cooper, C. Bouysset, N. Pirastu, M. Dibat- tista, et al. (2021a). Corrigendum to: More Than Smell—COVID-19 Is Associated With Severe Impairment of Smell, Taste, and Chemesthesis. Chemical Senses 46.

42. Parma, V., K. Ohla, M. G. Veldhuizen, M. Y. Niv, C. E. Kelly, A. J. Bakke, K. W. Cooper, C. Bouysset, N. Pirastu, M. Dibat- tista, et al. (2021b). Erratum: More Than Smell-COVID-19 Is Associated with Severe Impairment of Smell, Taste, and Chemesthesis (Chemical Senses (2020. Chemical Senses 46.

43. Kumar, V., S. Patel, S. Sharma, R. Kumar, and R. Kaur (2022). Fifty Years of Cervical Myelopathy Research: Results from a Bibliometric Analysis. Asian Spine Journal.

44. Suhag, R., R. Kumar, A. Dhiman, A. Sharma, P. K. Prabhakar, K. Gopalakrishnan, R. Kumar, and A. Singh (2022). Fruit peel bioactives, valorisation into nanoparticles and potential applications: A review. Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, 1–20.

Talks and other Academic Activities

Talks on using machine learning for understanding fragrance space at ECRO, ISOT conferences and University of Hertfordshire, UK.
Using Slack Conversations to understand participation’, DEI townhall at Global Consortitum for Chemosensory researchers.
Machine learning for electronic nose and tongue design’, VIT, Bhopal, India.
Machine learning tutorials at MIDL-2019, Baba Farid College of Engineering & Technology, Bathinda.
Organised Machine learning workshop at CSIO Chandigarh, MIDL-19
Big data and Application’, IETE, Chandigarh, India.
Artificial Intelligence and applications’, MIT, Jaipur, India.
Social Impact theory optimization, UIET, Chandigarh, India’.
Reviewer PLOS Computational Biology, Scientific Reports, PLOS One, Royal Society-Interface, Chemmometrics and Intelligent Laboratory Systems.