Ilina

build(for: people_left_out)

I'm Ilina
Mukherjee

IB Diploma, Grade 12 · The International School Bangalore

Eye care. Speech AI. A wheelchair that listens. I build science and technology with real partners, for people who are often left out: elders in rural Bengal, leprosy survivors, a young woman with cerebral palsy, and my own grandparents. Right now I'm working with our partner eye hospital to take my phone-based cataract screening AI from eye camps to village kiosks.

When I'm not building, I'm at the piano (twelve years, two international Grand Prizes, one Royal Albert Hall stage) or on the mat as a 2nd Dan black belt in Taekwondo.

Research & Projects Get in Touch
800+eye surgeries funded
ACCV ’26ML paper, oral talk
Diana Award2026
IM
Research & Projects

Questions I've chased

University research, papers and working projects with hospitals and community partners. Most of it started with a person I knew who needed something that didn't exist yet.

Research

Chart of angular mismatch against angle of arrival for one listener
Audio & Signal Processing2026Research · UIUC

Learning Personalized HRTFs from Binaural Recordings

Question
Can personalised 3D audio be learned from a cheap pair of microphones, as a first step towards hearing aids tuned to each person's ears?
Method
Recorded sound at both ears from marked angles and estimated head-related transfer functions two ways: broadband least squares and per-frequency cross-correlation.
Finding
Listeners placed the synthesised sound within about 10° (±5°) of its true direction at most angles.
Role
Student researcher, SINRG, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, with Prof. Romit Roy Choudhury.
Project page and audio demos →
Research poster: orbit determination of asteroid 2015 GF27, orbital elements
AstrophysicsSummer 2026Research · SSP

Orbit Determination of Near-Earth Asteroid 2015 GF27

Question
Where is near-Earth asteroid 2015 GF27 headed, working only from a few telescope observations?
Method
From three observations taken at the LCO McDonald Observatory, Texas, I used the Method of Gauss to compute the asteroid's position and velocity and derive its six classical orbital elements.
Finding
Our team predicted the preliminary orbit, with uncertainty estimated by Monte Carlo simulation, and presented it at the University of Wisconsin–River Falls.
Program
Summer Science Program, one of the most selective in the US (about 5% acceptance). Mentors: Dr. Truong Le, Dr. Marta McNeese, Dr. Michael Rodruck.
Read the paper →
Workshop programme listing the paper at TrustFMI, ACCV 2026
Medical AI2026Research · Oral

Diagnostic-Language Dependence and Robustness in Multimodal Medical LLMs

Question
When AI models diagnose chest X-rays, are they reading the image, or the words in the report next to it?
Method
Evaluated five multimodal models on 657 CheXpert Plus cases, removing diagnostic terms from reports and testing 29 controlled perturbations.
Finding
With diagnostic terms removed, accuracy fell to 16% even with the image present. Demographic changes caused the largest spurious flips.
Venue
TrustFMI workshop at ACCV 2026, Springer LNCS. Oral presentation in Osaka, Japan.
Read the paper →

Projects

Clear Voice app on a phone showing the transcript My leg is hurting
Speech AIGrade 12Project · Demo

Clear Voice: speech recognition for cerebral palsy

Question
A standard recogniser turned "My leg is hurting" into "Why do you hate me?" Could AI understand a young woman with dysarthria well enough to replace an exam scribe?
Method
Wrote 149 everyday sentences around her hardest words, recorded 16.7 minutes at home, and fine-tuned Whisper to her voice with five-fold cross-validation.
Finding
Word errors fell from 30.0% to 6.6%, and to 5.9% on a later day. 78% of sentences now come out word-perfect.
Partner
Spastics Society of Karnataka. Next: a framework so parents can record data at home for other students.
Demo video →Presentation →
Wheelchair electronics under the seat: batteries, Raspberry Pi and motor drivers
Assistive RoboticsGrade 12Project · Demo

Voice-controlled semi-autonomous wheelchair

Question
When my grandfather lost the ability to walk, he could only move when someone was free to push him. Could an ordinary wheelchair drive itself to a room when you say its name?
Method
Added two 250 W geared motors with Arduino control, and a Raspberry Pi 5 that interprets room names with a language model and plans routes on a floor-plan graph by dead reckoning.
Finding
Holds 0.31 m/s with 0.6% variation and predicts distance within 1% over 9.2 m. Built for ₹48,500 and in supervised daily use.
Role
Designed and built it, with guidance from Prof. Ratna Ghosh, Jadavpur University. Submitted to IRIS.
Demo 1 →Demo 2 →Demo 3 →Presentation →
An eye examination at a Lens Project camp
Medical AIGrade 11 – nowProject · Demo soon

Phone-based AI cataract screening

Question
At our eye camps, hundreds of villagers queue for a few doctors. Could a phone screen for cataract without a slit-lamp microscope?
Method
Collected 300+ images at the partner hospital, designed an imaging set-up from a 25D lens, an LED and a smartphone, and trained a CNN on dilated eyes.
Finding
Detects Grade 2 and Grade 3 cataract with about 90% accuracy. Camp doctors approved it, and I trained village volunteers to use it.
Next
The hospital has a roadmap to deploy it as kiosks at stations and village centres.
Demo coming soon
Quantum MathematicsSummer 2026

MathQuantum Fellow, University of Maryland

Selected for the high school cohort of MathQuantum, an NSF-funded research training program. Studied the mathematics of qubits and quantum computing and completed a faculty-mentored project, building on the university-level math I taught myself for my HRTF research.

About the program →
Leadership

Bringing others in

I lead by building teams: doctors and village youth for The Lens Project, and students, especially girls, in coding, writing and math at school.

The Lens Project

Founder · 2021 – now · Free eye care for elderly villagers and leprosy survivors in rural West Bengal
Diana Award, 2026

My grandparents, both doctors, served their village community for decades. On visits I saw elders lose their livelihoods to failing eyesight, and leprosy survivors turned away by stigma. When age brought my grandparents' service to a close, I started The Lens Project in Grade 8 to carry it on.

I built a team of doctors, village youth and village councillors to run eye camps twice a year, and I raise the funds for cataract surgery, lenses, medicines and post-operative care, delivered with Vivekananda Mission Ashram Eye Hospital, Midnapur. In the early years villagers doubted we were apolitical. Repeated visits and honest conversations won their trust.

Turnout has grown from about 450 patients per camp in 2023 to about 700 in 2025. When I leave for college in 2027, a core group of 15 village youth will run the camps on the ground while I manage fundraising and logistics online and return for at least one camp a year.

thelensproject.in ↗The cataract screening AI ↑
Elderly women at a Lens Project eye camp in rural West Bengal The Lens Project volunteer team
Eye camps and the volunteer team in rural West Bengal
4,500+people assessed
800+cataract and complex eye surgeries
4,000+given medicines and spectacles
200leprosy survivors treated

At school

  • 2023
    Technovation Girls Regional Finalist, MiteraBuilt Mitera, a women's health app, and reached the regional finals of a global competition across 120+ countries (top 6 of 1,000+ teams). Afterwards I brought more girls at my school into the program.
    Coding
  • Grades 9–10
    Secretary, Cyber Club, NPS HSRFirst female Secretary, after serving as Deputy. Set recursion and dynamic-programming problems and organised the Cybernautica hackathon for 40+ coders.
    Coding
  • Grade 10
    Event Head, LitUpLed an inter-school literary event for about 20 schools and 200 selected participants.
    Writing
  • 2022 – 25
    Creative Writing Editor, school magazineFour years on the NPS HSR editorial team, ending as editor for creative writing.
    Writing
  • 2026
    Head of PR & Communications, PiTHONOrganising committee of TISB's maths festival, with 300+ participants.
    Math
  • 2026
    Head of Sponsors, TEDx TISBAlso coordinated the middle-school Digits of Pi competition.
    Events
Classical Music

Twelve years at the piano

Performing on stage at the Royal Albert Hall, London, with prize certificates Piano performances on stage
On stage at the Royal Albert Hall, London, 2023

I've trained in classical piano since I was five, for twelve years under Professor Natalia Kapilova. Music is where I balance logic with creativity. It even led to my IB Physics Extended Essay, which uses Fourier analysis to study the sound of Bach cadences.

  • 2023
    Grand Prize, Virtuoso InternationalPerformed the winning piece at the Royal Albert Hall, London. Watch the performance ↗
    International
  • 2022
    Grand Prize, Virtuoso InternationalInvited to perform at the Mozarteum, Salzburg.
    International
  • 2024
    3rd Prize, Gold International Classical Music CompetitionPiano, Category IV.
    International
  • 2024
    LCM Grade 8 with DistinctionLondon College of Music's highest graded exam. 100/100 in Grade 6 and High Achiever Awards along the way.
    Exam
  • 2025
    Public performance, Bangalore International CentreI also play in the TISB band and at school events.
    Performance
Painting

Painting

Painting is where I slow down and look closely. I work mostly in watercolour, with portraits, people at work and wildlife.

National 1st2021

Eco-Awareness Art Competition, Government of India

First place nationally, from the Department of Environment, Forest and Climate Change with the Maharashtra Forest Department.

Full art portfolio →
Watercolour: a girl carrying a woven basket on her head
Watercolour: an elephant and her calf
Painting: a cubist-style portrait of a woman in bold colour
Watercolour: a woman carrying a child along the shore
Outside the lab

Writing and Taekwondo

Writing2022

Grand Winner, Katha Utsav

Young Writer's Award at India's biggest festival for young writers.

Writing2022

Times NIE published student author

One of 100 students chosen across the state, and later creative writing editor of my school magazine.

Taekwondo2019

2nd Dan black belt

Earned through World Taekwondo grading examinations.

Recognition

Awards & selections

  • 2026
    The Diana AwardFor The Lens Project. Honours young people for social action and humanitarian work.
    Social impact
  • 2026
    Summer Science Program, AstrophysicsOne of the most selective summer research programs in the US, about 5% acceptance.
    Research
  • 2026
    MathQuantum Fellow, University of MarylandNSF-funded program in the mathematics of quantum information science.
    Research
  • 2026
    Paper accepted, TrustFMI @ ACCV 2026Selected for oral presentation in Osaka, Japan.
    Publication
  • 2022–24
    Two Grand Prizes, Virtuoso International · 3rd Prize, Gold InternationalRoyal Albert Hall, London and the Mozarteum, Salzburg.
    Piano
  • 2023
    Technovation Girls Regional FinalistTop 6 of 1,000+ teams in a global competition across 120+ countries.
    Coding
  • 2022
    Grand Winner, Katha Utsav · Times NIE student authorNational writing honours.
    Writing
  • 2021
    National 1st, Eco-Awareness Art CompetitionGovernment of India.
    Painting
  • 2019
    2nd Dan black belt, World TaekwondoEarned through grading examinations.
    Taekwondo
Earlier Work

Where it started

Before Grade 11: the competitions and builds where I first learned to code, compete and ask questions.

Coding & Robotics3
  • 2024
    DermDetect, StudentHacksDeep-learning app (VGG-16) that classifies skin lesions as benign or malignant. Top 100 of 3,000 at the IBM-sponsored hackathon.
    Top 100
  • 2024
    1st, Timelapse Coding Fest · 1st, Interschool IdeathonInter-school coding fest at NPS Rajajinagar, and an ideathon solution built on PageRank and one-time-key encryption.
    1st place
  • 2022–23
    Interschool robotics and coding winsIncluding a remote-control car built with a BLDC motor and Arduino.
    Winner
Olympiads & Quizzing2
  • 2022
    International Rank 1, SOF English OlympiadGrade 9.
    Rank 1
  • 2020
    First Runner-up, The Hindu Young World QuizAmong 200 teams across South India. The Hindu coverage ↗
    Runner-up
Sport1
  • Before Gr. 9
    Competitive swimmingCompeted in swimming before high school.
    Swimming
Contact

Let's talk

I'm always glad to hear from researchers, doctors, musicians and students who want to build things that help people. Email is the fastest way to reach me.

Emaililinamukherjee2020@gmail.com
GitHubilinamukherjee
Open ↗
The Lens Projectthelensproject.in
Open ↗