Department of Computer Science and Information Systems

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://localhost:4000/handle/123456789/1928

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Author: search.filters.author.Challa, Jagat Sesh

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    SAC: a framework for measuring and inducing personality traits in llms with dynamic intensity control
    (2025-06) Challa, Jagat Sesh; Kumar, Dhruv
    Large language models (LLMs) have gained significant traction across a wide range of fields in recent years. There is also a growing expectation for them to display human-like personalities during interactions. To meet this expectation, numerous studies have proposed methods for modelling LLM personalities through psychometric evaluations. However, most existing models face two major limitations: they rely on the Big Five (OCEAN) framework, which only provides coarse personality dimensions, and they lack mechanisms for controlling trait intensity. In this paper, we address this gap by extending the Machine Personality Inventory (MPI), which originally used the Big Five model, to incorporate the 16 Personality Factor (16PF) model, allowing expressive control over sixteen distinct traits. We also developed a structured framework known as Specific Attribute Control (SAC) for evaluating and dynamically inducing trait intensity in LLMs. Our method introduces adjective-based semantic anchoring to guide trait intensity expression and leverages behavioural questions across five intensity factors: \textit{Frequency}, \textit{Depth}, \textit{Threshold}, \textit{Effort}, and \textit{Willingness}. Through experimentation, we find that modelling intensity as a continuous spectrum yields substantially more consistent and controllable personality expression compared to binary trait toggling. Moreover, we observe that changes in target trait intensity systematically influence closely related traits in psychologically coherent directions, suggesting that LLMs internalize multi-dimensional personality structures rather than treating traits in isolation. Our work opens new pathways for controlled and nuanced human-machine interactions in domains such as healthcare, education, and interviewing processes, bringing us one step closer to truly human-like social machines.
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    The Impact of Large Language Models on K-12 Education in Rural India: A Thematic Analysis of Student Volunteer's Perspectives
    (2025-05) Kumar, Dhruv; Challa, Jagat Sesh; Ramachandran, Veena
    AI-driven education, particularly Large Language Models (LLMs), has the potential to address learning disparities in rural K-12 schools. However, research on AI adoption in rural India remains limited, with existing studies focusing primarily on urban settings. This study examines the perceptions of volunteer teachers on AI integration in rural education, identifying key challenges and opportunities. Through semi-structured interviews with 23 volunteer educators in Rajasthan and Delhi, we conducted a thematic analysis to explore infrastructure constraints, teacher preparedness, and digital literacy gaps. Findings indicate that while LLMs could enhance personalized learning and reduce teacher workload, barriers such as poor connectivity, lack of AI training, and parental skepticism hinder adoption. Despite concerns over over-reliance and ethical risks, volunteers emphasize that AI should be seen as a complementary tool rather than a replacement for traditional teaching. Given the potential benefits, LLM-based tutors merit further exploration in rural classrooms, with structured implementation and localized adaptations to ensure accessibility and equity.
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    InFER++: real-world indian facial expression dataset
    (IEEE, 2024-08) Challa, Jagat Sesh; Narang, Pratik
    Detecting facial expressions is a challenging task in the field of computer vision. Several datasets and algorithms have been proposed over the past two decades; however, deploying them in real-world, in-the-wild scenarios hampers the overall performance. This is because the training data does not completely represent socio-cultural and ethnic diversity; the majority of the datasets consist of American and Caucasian populations. On the contrary, in a diverse and heterogeneous population distribution like the Indian subcontinent, the need for a significantly large enough dataset representing all the ethnic groups is even more critical. To address this, we present InFER++, an India-specific, multi-ethnic, real-world, in-the-wild facial expression dataset consisting of seven basic expressions. To the best of our knowledge, this is the largest India-specific facial expression dataset. Our cross-dataset analysis of RAF-DB vs InFER++ shows that models trained on RAF-DB were not generalizable to ethnic datasets like InFER++. This is because the facial expressions change with respect to ethnic and socio-cultural factors. We also present LiteXpressionNet, a lightweight deep facial expression network that outperforms many existing lightweight models with considerably fewer FLOPs and parameters. The proposed model is inspired by MobileViTv2 architecture, which utilizes GhostNetv2 blocks to increase parametrization while reducing latency and FLOP requirements. The model is trained with a novel objective function that combines early learning regularization and symmetric cross-entropy loss to mitigate human uncertainties and annotation bias in most real-world facial expression datasets.
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    Optimizing liquid neural networks: a comparative study of ltcs and cfcs
    (IEEE, 2024) Challa, Jagat Sesh
    Liquid Time Constant Networks (LTCs) and Closed Form Continuous Networks (CFCs) are recent time-continuous RNN models known for superior expressivity and efficiency in time-series prediction and autonomous navigation. This paper provides an accessible overview of these models and investigates their performance on tasks like Atari ’Breakout’ behavior cloning, steering angle prediction, and Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI) forecasting. We optimize LTC and CFC cells within network structures, comparing them with LSTM. Detailed experiments highlight the impact of various hyperparameters, underscoring the effectiveness of LTCs and CFCs in dynamic prediction tasks.
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    Sakshm AI: advancing ai-assisted coding education for engineering students in india through socratic tutoring and comprehensive feedback
    (2025-03) Challa, Jagat Sesh
    he advent of Large Language Models (LLMs) is reshaping education, particularly in programming, by enhancing problem-solving, enabling personalized feedback, and supporting adaptive learning. Existing AI tools for programming education struggle with key challenges, including the lack of Socratic guidance, direct code generation, limited context retention, minimal adaptive feedback, and the need for prompt engineering. To address these challenges, we introduce Sakshm AI, an intelligent tutoring system for learners across all education levels. It fosters Socratic learning through Disha, its inbuilt AI chatbot, which provides context-aware hints, structured feedback, and adaptive guidance while maintaining conversational memory and supporting language flexibility. This study examines 1170 registered participants, analyzing platform logs, engagement trends, and problem-solving behavior to assess Sakshm AI's impact. Additionally, a structured survey with 45 active users and 25 in-depth interviews was conducted, using thematic encoding to extract qualitative insights. Our findings reveal how AI-driven Socratic guidance influences problem-solving behaviors and engagement, offering key recommendations for optimizing AI-based coding platforms. This research combines quantitative and qualitative insights to inform AI-assisted education, providing a framework for scalable, intelligent tutoring systems that improve learning outcomes. Furthermore, Sakshm AI represents a significant step toward Sustainable Development Goal 4 Quality Education, providing an accessible and structured learning tool for undergraduate students, even without expert guidance. This is one of the first large-scale studies examining AI-assisted programming education across multiple institutions and demographics.
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    The role of generative AI tools in shaping mechanical engineering education from an undergraduate perspective
    (Springer Nature, 2025-03) Challa, Jagat Sesh; Kumar, Dhruv
    This study evaluates the effectiveness of three leading generative AI tools-ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot-in undergraduate mechanical engineering education using a mixed-methods approach. The performance of these tools was assessed on 800 questions spanning seven core subjects, covering multiple-choice, numerical, and theory-based formats. While all three AI tools demonstrated strong performance in theory-based questions, they struggled with numerical problem-solving, particularly in areas requiring deep conceptual understanding and complex calculations. Among them, Copilot achieved the highest accuracy (60.38%), followed by Gemini (57.13%) and ChatGPT (46.63%). To complement these findings, a survey of 172 students and interviews with 20 participants provided insights into user experiences, challenges, and perceptions of AI in academic settings. Thematic analysis revealed concerns regarding AI’s reliability in numerical tasks and its potential impact on students’ problem-solving abilities. Based on these results, this study offers strategic recommendations for integrating AI into mechanical engineering curricula, ensuring its responsible use to enhance learning without fostering dependency. Additionally, we propose instructional strategies to help educators adapt assessment methods in the era of AI-assisted learning. These findings contribute to the broader discussion on AI’s role in engineering education and its implications for future learning methodologies.
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    Rubric is all you need: enhancing llm-based code evaluation with question-specific rubrics
    (2025-03) Challa, Jagat Sesh; Kumar, Dhruv
    Since the disruption in LLM technology brought about by the release of GPT-3 and ChatGPT, LLMs have shown remarkable promise in programming-related tasks. While code generation remains a popular field of research, code evaluation using LLMs remains a problem with no conclusive solution. In this paper, we focus on LLM-based code evaluation and attempt to fill in the existing gaps. We propose multi-agentic novel approaches using question-specific rubrics tailored to the problem statement, arguing that these perform better for logical assessment than the existing approaches that use question-agnostic rubrics. To address the lack of suitable evaluation datasets, we introduce two datasets: a Data Structures and Algorithms dataset containing 150 student submissions from a popular Data Structures and Algorithms practice website, and an Object Oriented Programming dataset comprising 80 student submissions from undergraduate computer science courses. In addition to using standard metrics (Spearman Correlation, Cohen's Kappa), we additionally propose a new metric called as Leniency, which quantifies evaluation strictness relative to expert assessment. Our comprehensive analysis demonstrates that question-specific rubrics significantly enhance logical assessment of code in educational settings, providing better feedback aligned with instructional goals beyond mere syntactic correctness
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    AnyStreamKM: Anytime k-medoids Clustering for Streaming Data
    (IEEE, 2022) Challa, Jagat Sesh; Goyal, Navneet; Goyal, Poonam
    Stream Clustering algorithms have gained a lot of importance in the recent past due to rapid rising utilities of IoT systems and applications. Anytime algorithms and frameworks play a key role in handling streams that have data arriving/generating at variable rates. They are capable of handling both slow and fast stream speeds, at the same time generate the result with highest possible accuracy. In this paper, we present AnyStreamKM, which is a framework for anytime k-medoids clustering of data streams. It uses a proposed hierarchical data indexing structure known as AnyKMTree that stores the incoming data from the stream in the form of hierarchy of micro-clusters. AnyKMTree is an adaptation of R-tree with its splitting strategy inspired from the design principles of k-medoids clustering. AnyKMTree not only supports anytime features but is also capable of filtering out noise and outliers. Our experimental analysis establishes that AnyKMTree produces micro-clusters that are more compact and purer than the state-of-the-art methods. Also, when offline k-medoids clustering such as PAM (Partitioning Around Medoids) is applied on the micro-clusters produced by AnyKMTree, the resultant clustering has been found to be of higher quality than the state-of-the-art methods.
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    An Adaptive Hierarchical Method for Anytime Set-wise Clustering of Variable and High-Speed Data Streams
    (IEEE, 2023) Challa, Jagat Sesh; Goyal, Poonam; Goyal, Navneet
    Set-wise Clustering is a clustering technique for data streams that groups sets of objects based on distribution patterns, applicable in contexts like retail chain clustering, text-based community clustering, restaurant categorization, etc. The existing set-wise clustering method cannot handle variable and high-speed streams with reasonable accuracy. This paper presents an Anytime Set-wise Clustering method for data streams known as ANYSETCLUS. The method handles the variable inter-arrival rates of stream objects using a proposed indexing structure called AnySetClusTree, which stores a hierarchy of micro-clusters of multi-set entities at varying granularity. ANYSETCLUS is highly adaptive as it supports incremental model updates, segregates outliers, enables outlier-to-concept transition, and captures concept drift. The method also enables anytime offline clustering wherein it can generate multiple clusterings of varying granularity and purity depending upon the available time allowance for final clustering. The experimental results affirm the superior efficacy of the proposed method in handling variable and high-speed streams compared to the state-of-the-art method. The experimental results also showcase its effectiveness in achieving significantly higher micro-cluster purity for low and high-speed streams. This contrasts with the state-of-the-art method, which is unable to generate valid clustering results for high-speed streams. The experiments further validate the proposed method’s capability for anytime offline clustering.
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    A Survey and Experimental Review on Data Distribution Strategies for Parallel Spatial Clustering Algorithms
    (Springer, 2024-06) Challa, Jagat Sesh; Balasubramaniam, Sundar; Goyal, Navneet; Goyal, Poonam
    The advent of Big Data has led to the rapid growth in the usage of parallel clustering algorithms that work over distributed computing frameworks such as MPI, MapReduce, and Spark. An important step for any parallel clustering algorithm is the distribution of data amongst the cluster nodes. This step governs the methodology and performance of the entire algorithm. Researchers typically use random, or a spatial/geometric distribution strategy like kd-tree based partitioning and grid-based partitioning, as per the requirements of the algorithm. However, these strategies are generic and are not tailor-made for any specific parallel clustering algorithm. In this paper, we give a very comprehensive literature survey of MPI-based parallel clustering algorithms with special reference to the specific data distribution strategies they employ. We also propose three new data distribution strategies namely Parameterized Dimensional Split for parallel density-based clustering algorithms like DBSCAN and OPTICS, Cell-Based Dimensional Split for dGridSLINK, which is a grid-based hierarchical clustering algorithm that exhibits efficiency for disjoint spatial distribution, and Projection-Based Split, which is a generic distribution strategy. All of these preserve spatial locality, achieve disjoint partitioning, and ensure good data load balancing. The experimental analysis shows the benefits of using the proposed data distribution strategies for algorithms they are designed for, based on which we give appropriate recommendations for their usage.