William Hicks (Engineer, RAPIDS AI, NVIDIA): “Over the past couple of years, I had the extraordinary pleasure of working with Bhavan on several projects, first when he was an intern and later when he joined Kitware full-time. Even as an intern, his contributions to the team were invaluable. He combines a deep knowledge of machine learning techniques and research with an unparalleled willingness to branch out and try new things. When Bhavan tackles a problem, he does not automatically reach for the same tool that he used on the last one. Instead, he does a detailed by highly-efficient survey of the state-of-the-art and rapidly works through tests of the most promising avenues of investigation. He then digs deep into those that prove most interesting, combining and building on them in innovative and often unexpected ways.”