Computer Engineering • AI Research • Systems

Exploring the frontier where computer vision meets machine intelligence.

I'm Emiliano Romero, a Computer Engineering student and AI Researcher. This space is an open repository for experiments, technical writeups, unfiltered learnings, and ideas that don't fit into a standard CV.

University of Oxford (Summer CV Programme)
Computer Vision & Deep Learning
High-Performance AI Engineering
01 / RESEARCH

Visual Representation

Self-supervised visual encoders, feature distillation, and geometric priors in foundation models.

02 / SYSTEMS

Edge & Engineering

Low-latency inference engines, CUDA acceleration, and deploying deep learning on constrained edge hardware.

03 / ACADEMIA

Oxford Programme

Intensive summer coursework in advanced Computer Vision at Oxford University, covering spatial and generative models.

04 / ARCHIVE

Random Thoughts

Unfiltered engineering notes, papers I'm reading, mental models, and learnings outside LinkedIn's character limit.

Section 01

Selected Research & Systems

View notes stream →
Research Paper / Project 2024 • Oxford Track

Self-Supervised Feature Distillation for Real-Time Edge Vision

Investigating methods to transfer high-dimensional spatial representations from large vision foundation models (DINOv2) into sub-50ms convolutional backbones for resource-constrained robotic platforms.

Systems Architecture 2024 • Engineering

High-Throughput Vision Transformers with Sparse Attention

Benchmarking latency and memory bottlenecks across multi-head attention kernels in visual transformers. Evaluated custom memory layouts to maximize tensor core saturation under variable image patch resolutions.

Independent Study 2024 • Deep Learning

Zero-Shot Anomaly Detection in Low-Compute Robotics

An exploration into contrastive visual-language embeddings to flag out-of-distribution physical obstacles without supervised defect datasets. Designed for fast inference on ARM architectures.

System Prototype 2024 • Full-Stack

Autonomous Telemetry Pipeline & Experiment Tracker

A minimalist distributed tracking tool built for personal model training runs. Provides live telemetry over WebSockets with zero external cloud SaaS dependencies and micro-second logging overhead.

Academic Spotlight • University of Oxford

Intensive Summer Programme in Computer Vision & Advanced AI

“Studying Computer Vision at Oxford reshaped how I think about perceptual representation in neural architectures. Moving beyond black-box classification towards 3D spatial reconstruction, multi-view geometry, and generative priors.”

Epipolar Geometry & Multi-View Stereo Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs) & 3D Gaussians Optical Flow & Motion Estimation Self-Supervised Vision Backbones
Section 02

Thoughts, Learnings & Raw Notes

Unfiltered Stream
Nov 2024 #VISION-MODELS

Why video foundation models still struggle with temporal causality

Most modern video architectures treat time as an extended spatial dimension rather than a directional causal flow. Notes on why autoregressive tokens fail to preserve physical object permanence across occlusions.

Open

In diffusion and autoregressive video architectures, temporal attention is typically computed across frames as if they were sequence tokens. But physical reality has non-negotiable symmetries: conservation of mass, momentum, and strict temporal irreversibility.

“Treating time as just another spatial dimension creates hallucinations whenever objects pass behind occluders.”

When a synthetic object passes behind an occluder, standard self-attention loses track of latent state continuity because it relies on visual resemblance rather than physical state estimation. Explicit geometric state-space models (SSMs) or world-model latents offer a promising way forward.

Aug 2024 #OXFORD-DIARY

Oxford Reflections: The geometry of latent spaces in vision encoders

A collection of personal takeaways from Oxford lectures: how Euclidean distance metrics fall short in semantic high-dimensional manifolds, and why spherical embeddings matter for contrastive loss functions.

Open

During our sessions at Oxford, we dissected multi-view geometry alongside self-supervised vision encoders like DINOv2. A core insight: while cosine similarity works well for coarse classification, dense prediction tasks (depth, surface normals, 6DoF pose) require representations that preserve metric distance ratios.

“Perception is not classification; perception is an inverse graphics problem with projective geometry constraints.”

Exploring hyperbolic and Riemannian manifolds for vision embeddings reveals that tree-like semantic hierarchies fit naturally into non-Euclidean curvature.

Jul 2024 #ENGINEERING-TASTE

Engineering taste: When to write raw C++ vs. when Python is plenty

Premature optimization is a distraction, but knowing your hardware memory hierarchy is non-negotiable. Reflections on profiling GPU memory transfer bottlenecks before touching any kernel code.

Open

Rule of thumb I've developed: if the problem is bounded by Python interpreter overhead or host-to-device PCIe bandwidth, no amount of NumPy vectorization will save you. Write the custom PyTorch C++ extension or Triton kernel.

“Most latency issues aren't compute-bound; they are memory-bandwidth and cache-miss bound.”

Before spending a week writing custom CUDA kernels, run Nsight Compute or PyTorch Profiler. 90% of the time, fused operations or contiguous tensor layouts yield the same speedup with zero maintainability cost.

Jun 2024 #RANDOM-THOUGHT

The unreasonable effectiveness of synthetic data in robotics sim-to-real

Why domain randomization often beats hyper-realistic rendering pipelines when training agents to navigate dynamic, noisy real-world environments.

Open

Photorealism is overrated; domain randomization is underrated. By randomizing lighting, textures, friction coefficients, and camera intrinsics beyond physical extremes, the neural net learns to discard surface-level noise and isolate topological invariants.

“If the model survives an unphysical simulation with neon pink lighting, it will easily survive direct sunlight in a factory.”
Section 03

Background & Direction

Curriculum Vitae Supplement

I am an undergraduate student in Computer Engineering with a rigorous focus on Artificial Intelligence and Computer Vision. My work sits at the intersection of statistical machine learning and high-performance systems engineering.

During my summer programme at the University of Oxford, I immersed myself in the mathematical and perceptual foundations of computer vision. I am interested in building vision systems that understand not just pixels, but geometry, physics, and causal mechanics.

This website serves as my public sandbox: a minimalist space to deploy prototypes, document research iterations, publish reading lists, and share things that standard professional profiles cannot accommodate.

● Vercel Deployment Test: Active & Ready