Nikhil Akalwadi

I am a Junior Research Fellow and Scholar at KLETech Center for Visual Intelligence (CEVI) , where I am privileged to be advised by Prof. Uma Mudenagudi. My research sits at the intersection of Computer Vision and Graphics, with a primary focus on Human-Centric Computer Vision. My recent work explores the complexities of human digitization, including 3D human modeling, avatar generation, and Human-Mesh Recovery (HMR).

Beyond digitization, I am deeply involved in developing frameworks for Human-Scene Interaction (HSI) and volumetric capture to advance the next generation of spatial computing and AR/VR/XR applications. My broader research interests also encompass AI-driven 3D content generation and human character animation.

I received my Bachelors in Electronics and Communication from KLE Technological University, Hubballi. During my undergraduate studies, I focused on Low-Level Vision Systems and published several works in the area, advised by Prof. Uma Mudenagudi, Prof. Ujwala Patil, and Ramesh Ashok Tabib. This foundational experience in areas like underwater image restoration and enhancement continues to inform my current approach to complex vision challenges.

Primary Research Areas

My primary research areas include Computer Vision for Volumetric Capture Systems, 3D Human Avatar Generation, 3D Human Avatar Animation towards Game Asset Generation, Human Scene Interaction. Other Research interests include Low-Level Vision, Underwater Image Restoration and Enhancement, Multispectral Image Analysis.

Recent Updates !!!

Jun 2025: Thrilled to share that the NTIRE 2025 Ambient Lighting Normalization Challenge Report is now published in the CVF Repository!
Jun 2025: Happy to announce the release of the NTIRE 2025 Challenge on Single Image Reflection Removal in the Wild report, now available on CVF Open Access.
Jun 2025: The Tenth NTIRE 2025 Image Denoising Challenge Report is out now! Check it out in the CVF Repository.
May 2025: KLETech Center of Excellence in Visual Intelligence is Co-Organizing the 3D Vision Summer School @ IIIT Hyderabad . Let's catch up!
Apr 2025: Announcement alert! We have been ranked in top 10 teams in 6 Challenges as a part of The 10th Edition of New Trends in Image Restoration and Enhancement (NTIRE) Workshop @ CVPR 2025.We will be publishing a joint report with the organizers of each of the challenge and also the fellow contestants from top teams.
Mar 2025: Excited to share that the challenge results report for MarineVision Restoration Challenge where I served as Program Committee member, is out now in CVF Repository!
Jan 2025: Excited to share that the challenge results report for MarineVision Restoration Challenge is available as an arXiv Pre-Print!
Dec 2024: Excited to share that I will be attending SIGGRAPH Asia 2024 @ Tokyo, Japan, Let's catch up!
Oct 2024: Thrilled to announce that I have been selected as Student Volunteer for SIGGRAPH Asia 2024 @ Tokyo, Japan.
Oct 2024: Thrilled to announce that I will be part of the Program Committee for 2024 IEEE Conference on Engineering Informatics (ICEI24).
Sept 2024: Delighted to announce that we at KLETech CEVI STAR Lab are hosting Marine Vision Restoration Challenge at Maritime Computer Vision Initiative (MaCVi), WACV 2025. I will be actively participating in the challenge as a member of Program Committee.
July 2024: Happy to announce, that I will be attending the 9th National Conference on Computer Vision, Pattern Recognition, Image Processing and Graphics (NCVPRIPG) 2024, at Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST), Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. Would be glad to meet you there!

Teaching Assistantships

Generative AI (Winter 2024) at KLE Technological University

Outreach

Student Volunteer for SIGGRAPH Asia 2024 @ Tokyo, Japan
Program Committee for MarineVision Restoration Challenge (MVRC), 3rd Workshop on Maritime Computer Vision (MaCVi) @ IEEE/CVF Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV) 2025
Volunteer for 3D Vision Summer School 2024 @ IIIT Bangalore
Editorial Board and Program Committee for 2024 IEEE Conference on Engineering Infromatics (ICEI24)

Peer Review Activity

IEEE Transactions on Image Processing (TIP), 2024, 2025
IET Image Processing 2025
The 3rd Workshop on Maritime Computer Vision (MaCVi) @ WACV 2025
IEEE Conference on Engineering Informatics 2024
Women in Machine Learning (WiML) @ NeurIPS 2024
Advances in Image Manipulation workshop and challenges (AIMWC) @ ECCV 2024
AI for Visual Arts Workshop and Challenges (AI4VA) @ ECCV 2024
Out Of Distribution Generalization in Computer Vision Workshop (OOD-CV) @ ECCV 2024
Geometry-grounded Representation Learning and Generative Modeling Workshop @ ICML 2024
Women in Computer Vision (WiCV) @ CVPR 2024
Women in Computer Vision (WiCV) @ CVPR 2023
Women in Computer Vision (WiCV) @ ICCV 2023

Publications

	3rd Workshop on Maritime Computer Vision (MaCVi) 2025: Challenge Results ..., Uma Mudenagudi, Chaitra Desai, Nikhil Akalwadi, ... Maritime Computer Vision, WACV 2025. CVF Report / arXiv / BibTex
	HNN: Hierarchical Noise-Deinterlace Net Towards Image Denoising Amogh Joshi, Nikhil Akalwadi, Chinmayee Mandi, Chaitra Desai, Ramesh Ashok Tabib, Ujwala Patil, Uma Mudenagudi The 20th Workshop on Perception Beyond Visible Spectrum (PBVS), CVPRW 2024* .* Project Page / Poster PDF / Video / BibTex
	ViD: Vision in Dark Sampada Malagi, Amogh Joshi, Nikhil Akalwadi, Chaitra Desai, Ramesh Ashok Tabib, Ujwala Patil, Uma Mudenagudi Women in Computer Vision (WiCV), CVPRW 2024* .* Poster PDF
	LightNet: Generative Model for Enhancement of Low-Light Images Chaitra Desai, Nikhil Akalwadi, Amogh Joshi, Sampada Malagi, Chinmayee Mandi, Ramesh Ashok Tabib, Ujwala Patil, Uma Mudenagudi Women in Computer Vision (WiCV), ICCVW 2023* (Oral).* Project Page / Poster PDF / BibTex
	MIPI 2023 Challenge on Nighttime Flare Removal: Methods and Results ..., Nikhil Akalwadi, Ankit Raichur, Vinod Patil, Allabakash G, Swaroop A, Amogh Joshi, Chaitra Desai, Ramesh Ashok Tabib, Ujwala Patil, Uma Mudenagudi, ... Mobile Intelligent Photography & Imaging (MIPI), CVPR 2023. Project Page / arXiv / BibTex
	DeFlare-Net: Flare Detection and Removal Network Allabakash Ghodesawar, Vinod Patil, Ankit Raichur, Swaroop Adrashyappanamath, Sampada Malagi, Nikhil Akalwadi, Chaitra Desai, Ramesh Ashok Tabib, Ujwala Patil & Uma Mudenagudi Pattern Recognition and Marchine Intelligence PReMI 2023 (Oral) Project Page / Video / BibTex
	NTIRE 2022 Challenge on Night Photography Rendering ..., Chaitra Desai, Nikhil Akalwadi, Amogh Joshi, Chinmayee Mandi, Sampada Malagi, Akash Uppin, Sai Sudheer Reddy, Ramesh Ashok Tabib, Ujwala Patil, Uma Mudenagudi New Trends in Image Restoration and Enhancement (NTIRE), CVPR 2022 Project Page / BibTex

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