Ibrahim Ahmed
Education
PhD - Electrical Engineering
Vanderbilt University
Aug '18 - Aug '23
Thesis: Adaptive fault-tolerant control using reinforcement learning.
Courses:
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MS - Electrical Engineering
Vanderbilt University
Aug '16 - Aug '18
Courses:
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BS - Electrical Engineering and Physics
Vanderbilt University
Aug '12 - May '16
Courses:
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Experience
Software Engineer
Apr '25 - Present
- Lead software infrastructure development for Google’s in-house machine learning accelerators (Tensor Processing Units) to screen for silent data corruption events to strengthen LLM training against hardware faults.
- Develop statistical models of performance/Total Cost of Ownership informed by silent data corruption events.
Technology:
C++
Python
SQL
Senior Controls Optimization Engineer
Trane Technologies
Sep '23 - Apr '25
- Sought out research and development opportunities in AI/ML/Controls software across Trane Technologies' business units and productionized research prototypes.
- Applied data-driven model predictive control and reinforcement learning for water-side energy optimization of HVACs.
- Designed LLM Agents for Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), task automation, and analytics pipelines to increase development velocity, reliability, and economy of digital product offerings across multiple business units.
- Designed AI control algorithms for datacenter cost optimization using digital twins.
- Democratized data-center cost optimization by designing 3D datacenter layout tools using three.js for simulating energy characteristics under various demand loads.
- Enabled customers to minimize energy costs of transport refrigeration units by exposing physics-based models to a python API (modelica to FMI) and using Bayesian optimization to automate vehicle configuration.
- Reduced customers' hardware maintenance costs via predictive maintenance by developing unsupervised anomaly detection algorithms for Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) units using steady-state and transient dynamics.
Technology:
Python
Modelica
Javscript
Research Associate
Tennessee State University
Jun '23 - Sep '23
- Designed a GUI route planning application using genetic algorithms for autonomous delivery robots in warehouses.
- Optimized sequence of delivery stops under battery power, congestion, and distance constraints by combining A* search algorithm with custom genetic search operators.
- Reduced planning latency by 90% down to 1 millisecond by benchmarking routing problems where using brute force would outperform genetic search.
Link(s):
Technology:
Matlab
Graduate Researcher
Vanderbilt University School of Engineering
Aug '16 - Jun '23
- Researched adaptive controller design in a multi-university team for autonomous drone flight under motor faults and wind disturbances using reinforcement learning.
- Developed embedded Ardupilot flight controller plugins in C++ that work with supervisory reinforcement learning controllers in PyTorch by writing a translation layer for the MAVLink protocol.
- Won best paper award at AIAA DASC for designing a simulation library for drones in python and C++ using numba and Gazebo.
- Reduced cooling energy consumption by 2-5% by deploying end-to-end cloud-based machine-learning controllers for energy optimization in 2 campus buildings.
- Increased sample efficiency on real-world data by training reinforcement learning controllers for smart buildings on data-driven models and physics-based simulations in Modelica and Simulink.
- Mitigated transfer gap from training to production by writing ETL libraries to parse timeseries building sensor data from third-party vendors and validating simulations against real-world performance.
- Enhanced building staff’s trust in machine learning controllers by developing a performance logging web application using Dash, with fallback logic for fault-tolerance to infrastructure down-time and data anomalies.
Technology:
Python
PyTorch
Pandas
Scikit-learn
Scipy
OpenAI gym
Research Intern
TieSet Inc
May '20 - Dec '20
- As a founding intern, led studies for privacy-preserving experiences in consumer and enterprise electronics.
- Assured private browsing and non-intrusive ad-serving by designing on-device machine learning library on top of tensorflow.js to match advertisement bids with compatible spaces.
- Consolidated intellectual property by writing a patent proposal for federated reinforcement-learning for energy optimization in smart buildings without sharing user data.
Technology:
Python
PyTorch
Flask
Tensorflow.js
Applied Scientist Intern
Amazon Web Services
May '19 - Aug '19
- Predicted remaining useful life (RUL) of warehouse machinery by leveraging digital signal processing (DSP) principles (wavelet transforms) for feature-engineering vibration signals for machine learning models.
- Implemented prognostics research papers into code and conducted feasibility studies by running parallel hyperparameter tuning experiments on m5.24xlarge AWS servers.
Technology:
Python
PyTorch
Pandas
Scikit-learn
Scipy
OpenAI gym
Research Intern
Vanderbilt Department of Physics & Astronomy
Jun '16 - Aug '16'
- Validated hypotheses of dark matter distribution in galaxies by developing point-cloud processing algorithms in python.
- Visualized 3.7 terabytes of n-body simulations as condensed animations by writing a parallel data-mining pipeline executing python scripts using SLURM on campus supercomputer.
Technology:
Python (numpy, matplotlib)
C
Bash
Business Intelligence Intern
Schneider Electric
Jun '15 - Aug '15
- Programmed SQL procedures to consolidate 40 million time-overlapping transactions into 1.5 million records with no data loss.
- Rewrote database backup routines to eliminate redundancies and reduced backup sizes by 75%.
- Designed visualizations in Domo from Alteryx workflows using sales operations data in North America.
Link(s):
Technology:
T-SQL
Alteryx
Domo
Python
Research Intern
Institute for Space and Defense Electronics, Vanderbilt University
Jun '14 - Aug '14
- Researched effects of solar and cosmic radiation on SRAM memory chips in space.
- Designed an FPGA interface in VHDL to test memory chips for corruption after irradiation.
Technology:
VHDL
Skills
Languages
Python
C++
Matlab
Modelica
Javascript
Bash
Powershell
Libraries
OpenCV
OpenMP
RTOS
CUDA
PyTorch
Scipy
Django
Flask
Matplotlib
Plotly
Dash
Pandas
Sklearn
D3.js
AngularJS
jQuery
SQL
HTML
CSS
Applications
Ardupilot
Gazebo
Simulink
Dymola
Extracurriculars
Graudate Fellow, Vandirbilt Institute for Digital Learning
Aug '17 - May '18
- Explored novel uses of digital media (virtual reality, data visualizations) in pedagogy.
- Scripted and produced videos to distil and convey academic research to a broad lay audience.
- Curated an online repository of digital learning resources in collaboration with other Fellows.
Resident Advisor
Aug '15 - May '16
- Organized after-hours recreational and educational programs for a residential community of 650 students.
- Identified students facing academic and personal challenges and provided mentorship, guidance, and connection with on-campus resources.
Mentor and Technical Specialist - Vanderbilt Design Studio
Jan '15 - Apr '16
- Maintained and repaired 3D printers, electronics, and tools at the Design Studio.
- Assisted users in design process with Makerbot Desktop and Autodesk 123D Design.
AcFee Subcommittee for Cultural Organizations
Jan '15 - May '15
- Reviewed campus organizations’ annual applications for funding.
- Allocated $218,000 from university funds to 43 organizations based on annual performance analyses.
Vanderbilt Student Volunteers for Science
Jan '14 - May '14
- Taught fundamentals of robotics using LEGO Mindstorms kits to 8th graders in Nashville public schools.
- Hosted interactive sessions with high school students about careers in engineering.
Honors
Vanderbilt 3 Minute Thesis Competition '19
First Position
Dean's List
Fall '12, '14, '15, Spring '13, '14, '15
Honorable Mention
International Physics Olympiad '11
Sigma Pi Sigma
Society of Physics Students
Publications
Ibrahim Ahmed, Marcos Quiñones-Grueiro, Gautam Biswas. 'A high-fidelity simulation test-bed for fault-tolerant octo-rotor control using reinforcement learning' in DASC 2022
Ibrahim Ahmed, Marcos Quiñones-Grueiro, Gautam Biswas. 'Analysis of the deployment strategies of reinforcement learning controllers for complex dynamic systems' in PHM 2021
Ibrahim Ahmed, Marcos Quiñones-Grueiro, Gautam Biswas. 'Transfer reinforcement learning for fault-tolerant control by re-using optimal policies' in SysTol 2021.
Ibrahim Ahmed, Marcos Quiñones-Grueiro, Gautam Biswas. 'Complementary Meta-Reinforcement Learning for Fault-Adaptive Control' in PHM 2020
Ibrahim Ahmed, Marcos Quiñones-Grueiro, Gautam Biswas. 'Fault-Tolerant Control of Degrading Systems with On-Policy Reinforcement Learning' in IEEE IFAC-PapersOnLine, 2020.
Avisek Naug, Ibrahim Ahmed, Gautam Biswas. 'Online Energy Management in Commercial Buildings using Deep Reinforcement Learning' in IEEE International Conference on Smart Computing, (SMARTCOMP), 2019.
Ibrahim Ahmed, Gautam Biswas, Hamed Khorasghani. 'Comparison of model predictive and reinforcement learning methods for fault tolerant control' in IFAC-PapersOnLine, Warsaw, Poland, 2018.