Name: Dec 4 - AI, ML and Computer Vision Meetup
Start: 2025-12-04T12:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-12-04T14:00:00-05:00

Join the virtual Meetup to hear talks from experts on cutting-edge topics across AI, ML, and computer vision.

**[Register for the Zoom](https://voxel51.com/events/ai-ml-and-computer-vision-meetup-december-4-2025)**

**Date and Time**

Dec 4, 2025
9:00 - 11:00 AM Pacific

**Benchmarking Vision-Language Models for Autonomous Driving Safety**

This workshop introduces a unified framework for evaluating how vision-language models handle driving safety. Using an enhanced BDDOIA dataset with scene, weather, and action labels, we benchmark models like Gemini, FastVLM, and Qwen within FiftyOne. Our results show consistent blind spots where models misjudge unsafe situations, highlighting the need for safer and more interpretable AI systems for autonomous driving.

*About the Speaker*

[Adonai Vera](https://www.linkedin.com/in/adonai-vera/) \- Machine Learning Engineer & DevRel at Voxel51\. With over 7 years of experience building computer vision and machine learning models using TensorFlow\, Docker\, and OpenCV\. I started as a software developer\, moved into AI\, led teams\, and served as CTO\. Today\, I connect code and community to build open\, production\-ready AI — making technology simple\, accessible\, and reliable\.

**TrueRice: AI-Powered Visual Quality Control for Rice Grains and Beyond at Scale**

Agriculture remains one of the most under-digitized industries, yet grain quality control defines pricing, trust, and livelihoods for millions. TrueRice is an AI-powered analyzer that turns a flatbed scanner into a high-precision, 30-second QC engine, replacing the 2+ hours and subjectivity of manual quality inspection.

Built on a state-of-the-art 8K image processing pipeline with SAHI (Slicing Aided Hyper Inference), it detects fine-grained kernel defects at scale with high accuracy across grain size, shape, breakage, discoloration, and chalkiness. Now being extended to maize and coffee, TrueRice showcases how cross-crop transfer learning and frugal AI engineering can scale precision QC for farmers, millers, and exporters. This talk will cover the design principles, model architecture choices, and a live demonstration, while addressing challenges in data variability, regulatory standards, and cross-crop adaptation.

*About the Speaker*

[Sai Jeevan Puchakayala](https://www.linkedin.com/in/saijeevanpuchakayala/) is an Interdisciplinary AI/ML Consultant, Researcher, and Tech Lead at Sustainable Living Lab (SL2) India, where he drives development of applied AI solutions for agriculture, climate resilience, and sustainability. He led the engineering of TrueRice, an award-winning grain quality analyzer that won India’s first International Agri Hackathon 2025.

**WeedNet: A Foundation Model Based Global-to-Local AI Approach for Real-Time Weed Species Identification and Classification**

Early and accurate weed identification is critical for effective management, yet current AI-based approaches face challenges due to limited expert-verified datasets and the high variability in weed morphology across species and growth stages. We present WeedNet, a global-scale weed identification model designed to recognize a wide range of species, including noxious and invasive plants. WeedNet is an end-to-end real-time pipeline that integrates self-supervised pretraining, fine-tuning, and trustworthiness strategies to improve both accuracy and reliability.

Building on this foundation, we introduce a Global-to-Local strategy: while the Global WeedNet model provides broad generalization, we fine-tune local variants such as Iowa WeedNet to target region-specific weed communities in the U.S. Midwest. Our evaluation addresses both intra-species diversity (different growth stages) and inter-species similarity (look-alike species), ensuring robust performance under real-world variability. We further validate WeedNet on images captured by drones and ground rovers, demonstrating its potential for deployment in robotic platforms. Beyond field applications, we integrate a conversational AI to enable practical decision-support tools for farmers, agronomists, researchers, and land managers worldwide. These advances position WeedNet as a foundational model for intelligent, scalable, and regionally adaptable weed management and ecological conservation.

*About the Speaker*

[Timilehin Ayanlade](https://www.linkedin.com/in/timilehin-ayanlade/) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Self-aware Complex Systems Laboratory at Iowa State University, where his research focuses on developing machine learning and computer vision methods for agricultural applications. His work integrates multimodal data across ground-based sensing, UAV, and satellite with advanced AI models to tackle challenges in weed identification, crop monitoring, and crop yield prediction.

**Memory Matters: Early Alzheimer’s Detection with AI-Powered Mobile Tools**

Advancements in artificial intelligence and mobile technology are transforming the landscape of neurodegenerative disease detection, offering new hope for early intervention in Alzheimer’s.
By integrating machine learning algorithms with everyday mobile devices, we are entering a new era of accessible, scalable, and non-invasive tools for early Alzheimer’s detection
In this talk, we’ll cover the potential of AI in health care systems, ethical considerations, plus an architecture, model, datasets and framework deep dive.

*About the Speaker*

[Reetam Biswas](https://www.linkedin.com/in/reetam-biswas-a624bb15/) has more than 18 years of experience in the IT industry as a software architect, currently working on AI.

Jimmy Guerrero

Boston AI, Machine Learning and Computer Vision Meetup

AI, Machine Learning and Computer Vision Meetup Network

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Dec 4 - AI, ML and Computer Vision Meetup

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Dec 4 - AI, ML and Computer Vision Meetup

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