Hello! My name is Ashish Vashist. I am an incoming MS in Machine Learning student at Carnegie Mellon University. I am currently a researcher at Cohere for AI Community, working on generalized VLA models for world models.

Previously, I was working as a Pre-Doc Researcher at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, on VLMs and Sim2Real systems under Prof. Suresh Sundaram. My projects include developing robust object detection systems for safety-critical aerospace applications in collaboration with Boeing, and building reasoning-based VLMs for atmospheric turbulence mitigation.

I also collaborated with Prof. Shruti Vyas at University of Central Florida on geographic domain shift. I worked at Carnegie Mellon University with Prof. Min Xu on 3D cryo-electron tomography. During my undergraduate, I also worked at the National University of Singapore with Prof. Luo Wei, Birla Institute of Technology, Indian Institute of Information Technology Allahabad, and Deep Forest Sciences as part of my Google Summer of Code project.

I founded CORD.ai, a non-profit research community connecting underserved students with researchers at top institutions worldwide, because I kept seeing talented students asking "How do I get into research?" and just needed guidance and access.

When I am not working on research, you will find me at the swimming pool, listening to Business Movers, learning new languages, or defending why Rohit Sharma's pull shot is the most elegant thing cricket has ever produced.

I'd love to chat about AI or collaborate on projects, so feel free to reach out for a virtual coffee chat!