I am a PhD student in AI & Neuroscience at Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN). Prior to starting my PhD, I worked for over five years as an Instrumentation & Control Engineer in a manufacturing facility in Pakistan, where I developed a strong interest in machine learning and data-driven problem solving.

🔬 My Research Focus

• 🔄 Solving inverse problems using diffusion models as priors.
• 🧠 Modeling the auditory cortex in squirrel monkeys using pretrained deep learning models.
  Manuscript: Deep Neural Networks Explain Spiking Activity in Auditory Cortex

🌟 Interests

• 🤖 Generative models & computational imaging
• 🌍 Exploring applications of AI in real-world problems

💼 Opportunities

I am currently seeking Summer 2026 internship opportunities in inverse problems, computational imaging, and generative modeling. I expect to graduate in Summer 2026 and am open to research positions in both industry and academia thereafter.

Recent Updates 📢

• 📰 New paper on arXiv 🔥
  Solving Diffusion Inverse Problems with Restart Posterior Sampling

• 📰 New paper published in PLOS Computational Biology!
  Deep Neural Networks Explain Spiking Activity in Auditory Cortex

• 🎓 Teaching Assistantship (Fall 2025)
  Serving as a TA for the graduate course ECE-60131: General Models at Purdue University.

🔬 Publications

• 📰 Deep Neural Networks Explain Spiking Activity in Auditory Cortex
  Published on August 25, 2025 in PLOS Computational Biology.
  DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1013334
  Authors: Bilal Ahmed, Joshua D. Downer, Brian J. Malone, Joseph G. Makin
  Abstract: This study demonstrates how artificial neural networks (ANNs) trained on speech audio can predict spiking activity in the auditory cortex of squirrel monkeys at fine time scales (50 ms bins), outperforming traditional spectrotemporal receptive fields and untrained networks.
  Read the full article

Conferences

• COSYNE 2023 - Montreal, Canada
  Poster: Understanding Auditory Cortex with Deep Neural Networks (Mar 9-12, 2023)

Blogs ✍️

• How Neural Networks Learn: A Probabilistic Viewpoint
  Published on December 25, 2024 on TDS (Towards Data Science).
  Read on Medium.

• Pretraining wav2vec2 Using Hugging Face Trainer API
  Published on November 2, 2024 on goPenAI.
  Read on Medium.

Relevant Coursework

• Computer Vision _{projects summary}
• Deep Learning
• Generative Models
• Computational Imaging
• Estimation Theory

Activities & Hobbies

• Reading: Investing, Economy, Business
• Sports: Cricket, Badminton