Can Bakiskan

Staff Software Engineer/Researcher

Can Bakiskan

Staff Software Engineer/Researcher

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bakiskan.com

Work Experience

Staff Software Engineer/Researcher
Santa Clara, CA
Intel Corporation
Jul 2025 - Present
  • Lead the development of an asynchronous job submission workflow that delivers optimal microscopy sampling locations for a single page application that displays integrated circuit layout clips.
  • Orchestrated the compartmentalization, organization and packaging of 4 Python / JavaScript mixed codebases.
Senior Software Engineer/Researcher
Santa Clara, CA
Intel Corporation
Oct 2022 - Jul 2025
  • Architected and lead the development of an internal single page application for clustering and visualizing tens of millions of integrated circuit layout clips for comparing products. Responsibilities included devising and implementing data generation algorithms, data automation, UI/UX design, full-stack development, benchmarking, parallelization and performance improvements, maintaining nightly builds.
  • Initiated and managed the adoption of developer productivity and code quality improvement tools for the whole project team, such as TypeScript, Vite, swc.
Graduate Student Researcher - Teaching Assistant (TA)
Santa Barbara, CA
University of California, Santa Barbara
Sept 2017 - Aug 2022
  • Improved the robustness of deep neural networks against adversarial attacks and noise using sparse encoding, dictionary learning, quantization, population coding, and Hebbian learning.
  • TA for 6 courses in a wide range of fields. As the head TA, designed and implemented the course project for the Data Science Capstone course.
Machine Learning Software Engineer Intern
Santa Barbara, CA
Intel Corporation
July 2021 - Sept 2021
  • Grouped and reduced Optane die-level failure maps to fundamental failure modes using dimensionality reduction, clustering and sparse dictionary learning. Visualized the results using a Dash/Plotly based prototype UI.
Visiting Research Student, Software Tools
Durham, NC
Duke University Nicolelis Lab
June 2016 - Sept 2016
  • Built signal processing tools for the analysis of vocalization, video and neural implant recordings of mice and rats from experiments, in MATLAB and Python.
Embedded Software Developer Intern
Istanbul, Turkey
Epsilon Elektronik
Sept 2015 - June 2016
  • Converted Visual Basic driver code to C using libusb-hidapi for a modernization of medical gamma spectrum analyzer project.
  • Built a local web server running on a single board computer using LAMP stack and jQuery to serve data coming from the spectrum analyzer in real time.

Education

Ph.D./M.Sc. in Electrical and Computer Engineering
Sept 2017 - Sept 2022
University of California, Santa Barbara
GPA: 4.00/4.00
  • Lab: Wireless Communications and Sensornets Laboratory
  • Advisor: Upamanyu Madhow
B.Sc. in Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Mathematics
Sept 2012 - June 2017
Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey
GPA: 3.87/4.00
Study Abroad Program
Sept 2014 - June 2015
University of California, Santa Barbara
GPA: 3.84/4.00
International Summer Honors Program
June 2013 - Aug 2013
Stanford University
GPA: 4.15/4.30

Programming Experience

Expert:
Python, PyTorch, JavaScript, TypeScript, Node.js, React
Intermediate:
C, C++, Cython, Linux/Bash
Worked with:
CUDA, Java, MATLAB, Mathematica, PHP, Rust
Expert: Python, PyTorch, JavaScript, TypeScript, Node.js, React
Intermediate: C++, Cython, Linux/Bash
Worked with: CUDA, Java, MATLAB, Mathematica, PHP, Go

Awards and Honors

Intel CMT Department Recognition Award – for sample plan creation work
Jan 2025
Intel CMT Department Recognition Award – for developer experience and code quality improvements
Apr 2024
Intel CMT Department Recognition Award – for pattern clustering work
Nov 2023
Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award
Dec 2020
Fulbright Scholarship Selected Candidate
Mar 2017
Top Ranking Double Major Student in Electrical Engineering
June 2017
Best Research Oriented Senior Design Project Award
June 2016
Dean's High Honor List
2013 - 2017

Publications

Can Bakiskan, Metehan Cekic, Upamanyu Madhow, "Early Layers Are More Important For Adversarial Robustness," in International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) Workshop - New Frontiers in Adversarial Machine Learning, 2022

Metehan Cekic, Can Bakiskan, Upamanyu Madhow, "Layerwise Hebbian/anti-Hebbian (HaH) Learning In Deep Networks: A Neuro-inspired Approach To Robustness," in International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) Workshop - New Frontiers in Adversarial Machine Learning, 2022

Can Bakiskan*, Metehan Cekic*, Upamanyu Madhow, "Neuro-Inspired Deep Neural Networks with Sparse, Strong Activations," in IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP), 2022

Metehan Cekic, Can Bakiskan, Upamanyu Madhow, "Towards Robust, Interpretable Neural Networks via Hebbian/anti-Hebbian Learning: A Software Framework for Training with Feature-Based Costs," in Software Impacts Journal, 2022

Can Bakiskan, Metehan Cekic, Ahmet Dundar Sezer, Upamanyu Madhow, "Sparse Coding Frontend for Robust Neural Networks," in International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) Workshop on Security and Safety in Machine Learning Systems, 2021

Can Bakiskan, Metehan Cekic, Ahmet Dundar Sezer, Upamanyu Madhow, "A Neuro-Inspired Autoencoding Defense Against Adversarial Attacks," in IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP), 2021

Can Bakiskan, Soorya Gopalakrishnan, Metehan Cekic, Upamanyu Madhow, Ramtin Pedarsani, "Polarizing Front Ends for Robust CNNs," in IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), 2020

*: Equal contribution

Teaching Experience

Data Science Capstone

Communication Systems Design

Digital Communication Fundamentals

Machine Learning from Signal Processing Perspective

Signal Analysis

Introduction to Fields and Waves