Mel White

Dr. Mel White


Research Focus & Metrics

Academic Career Length

4Years (2023-Present)

(Calculated once Scilit publication data is synced: current year − year of first publication + 1)

Representative Publications

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27 November 2023 in Sensors
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
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MWMel White
Mel White
TZTianyi Zhang
Tianyi Zhang
ADAkshat Dave
Akshat Dave
SGShahaboddin Ghajari
Shahaboddin Ghajari
AMAlyosha Molnar
Alyosha Molnar
AVAshok Veeraraghavan
Ashok Veeraraghavan
We present a novel architecture for the design of single-photon detecting arrays that captures relative intensity or timing information from a scene, rather than absolute. The proposed method for capturing relative information between pixels or groups of pixels requires very little circuitry, and thus allows for a significantly higher pixel packing factor than is possible with per-pixel TDC approaches. The inherently compressive nature of the differential measurements also reduces data throughput and lends itself to physical implementations of compressed sensing, such as Haar wavelets. We demonstrate this technique for HDR imaging and LiDAR, and describe possible future applications.

1 January 2023
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Conference Paper
Closed access
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MWMel White
Mel White
The integration of optics and computing in CMOS image sensors is enabling new advances in computational imaging and computer vision research. I will discuss how these sensors can overcome challenges in speed, bandwidth, and portability.

13 May 2025 in arXiv
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Preprint
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HBHossein Babaei
Hossein Babaei
MWMel White
Mel White
SASina Alemohammad
Sina Alemohammad
RBRichard G. Baraniuk
Richard G. Baraniuk
State-Space Models (SSMs) have re-emerged as a powerful tool for online function approximation, and as the backbone of machine learning models for long-range dependent data. However, to date, only a few polynomial bases have been explored for this purpose, and the state-of-the-art implementations were built upon the best of a few limited options. In this paper, we present a generalized method for building an SSM with any frame or basis, rather than being restricted to polynomials. This framework encompasses the approach known as HiPPO, but also permits an infinite diversity of other possible "species" within the SSM architecture. We dub this approach SaFARi: SSMs for Frame-Agnostic Representation.

18 May 2025 in arXiv
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Preprint
Open access
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HBHossein Babaei
Hossein Babaei
MWMel White
Mel White
SASina Alemohammad
Sina Alemohammad
RBRichard G. Baraniuk
Richard G. Baraniuk
State-Space Models (SSMs) have proven to be powerful tools for modeling long-range dependencies in sequential data. While the recent method known as HiPPO has demonstrated strong performance, and formed the basis for machine learning models S4 and Mamba, it remains limited by its reliance on closed-form solutions for a few specific, well-behaved bases. The SaFARi framework generalized this approach, enabling the construction of SSMs from arbitrary frames, including non-orthogonal and redundant ones, thus allowing an infinite diversity of possible "species" within the SSM family. In this paper, we introduce WaLRUS (Wavelets for Long-range Representation Using SSMs), a new implementation of SaFARi built from Daubechies wavelets.

9 June 2025 in arXiv
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Preprint
Open access
PDF file
HBHossein Babaei
Hossein Babaei
MWMel White
Mel White
RBRichard G. Baraniuk
Richard G. Baraniuk
State Space Models (SSMs) have emerged as powerful components for sequence modeling, enabling efficient handling of long-range dependencies via linear recurrence and convolutional computation. However, their effectiveness depends heavily on the choice and initialization of the state matrix. In this work, we build on the SaFARi framework and existing WaLRUS SSMs to introduce a new variant, W4S4 (WaLRUS for S4), a new class of SSMs constructed from redundant wavelet frames. WaLRUS admits a stable diagonalization and supports fast kernel computation without requiring low-rank approximations, making it both theoretically grounded and computationally efficient. We show that WaLRUS retains information over long horizons significantly better than HiPPO-based SSMs, both in isolation and when integrated into deep architectures such as S4. Our experiments demonstrate consistent improvements across delay reconstruction tasks, classification benchmarks, and long-range sequence modeling, confirming that high-quality, structured initialization enabled by wavelet-based state dynamic offers substantial advantages over existing alternatives. WaLRUS provides a scalable and versatile foundation for the next generation of deep SSM-based models.