CV
Contact Information
| Name | Kevin Galim |
| Professional Title | Senior AI Research Engineer |
| galimkevin@gmail.com |
Professional Summary
Machine learning researcher specializing in efficient inference for large-scale generative models and LLM systems. Author of 10+ publications at major ML conferences including ICLR, ICML, ACL, CVPR, ECCV, and WACV.
Experience
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2021 - present Seoul, South Korea
Senior AI Research Engineer
FuriosaAI
- Conducted research on large-scale generative models and LLMs, including efficient inference (KV-cache optimization, diffusion LLMs), scalable training (PEFT, state space models), and advanced architectures.
- Co-authored multiple first- and co-first-author papers in top-tier conferences (ICLR, ICML, ACL, CVPR, ECCV, WACV).
- Designed end-to-end pipelines for training, evaluating, and deploying LLMs on custom AI accelerators.
- Built and demonstrated real-time computer vision demos on custom hardware at CVPR 2022 and 2023.
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2020 - 2021 Seoul, South Korea
AI / Computer Vision Research and Development Engineer
Funzin
Worked on applied computer vision systems and deep learning models for autonomous and embedded platforms.
- Developed and trained deep learning models for object detection, road/sidewalk segmentation, and gesture detection using PyTorch and TensorFlow.
- Built perception systems for an autonomous golf cart platform, including detection and segmentation pipelines.
- Optimized models for embedded deployment using TensorRT, OpenVINO, Coral, DSP acceleration, and ARM NEON.
- Developed and calibrated a real-time OpenGL 3D surround-view system (SVM) for embedded hardware, demonstrated at CES 2021.
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2019 - 2020 Munich, Germany
Web / AR Developer (Freelance)
Dowosoft | Premium Software Development
- Built AR mobile applications using Unity3D.
- Developed cloud-backed web applications using AWS and Google Cloud.
- Created cross-platform mobile apps using Flutter.
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2015 - 2016 Munich, Germany
C++ / CUDA Software Engineer
ARRI
- Developed GPU-accelerated image processing algorithms using CUDA and OpenCL.
- Built real-time visualization and image analysis tools using C++ and OpenGL.
- Contributed to software used in professional digital cinema workflows.
Education
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2016 - 2019 Munich, Germany
Master's Degree
Technical University of Munich
Informatics — Games Engineering
- Specialization combining computer science, computer vision, and high-performance CPU/GPU programming.
- Master’s Thesis: Deep Learning for Video Depth Estimation from Defocus (Grade 1.0) — later published at CVPR 2020.
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2017 - 2018 Tokyo, Japan
Research (Semester Abroad)
The University of Tokyo
Computer Graphics
- Implemented a voxel-based rendering engine using C++ and OpenGL.
- Developed an anti-aliasing approach for ray tracing in voxel scenes.
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2013 - 2016 Munich, Germany
Bachelor's Degree
Technical University of Munich
Informatics — Games Engineering
- Bachelor’s Thesis: Preconditioners for Tikhonov Regularization in Image Deblurring.
- Research focused on numerical optimization and inverse problems in image restoration.
Publications
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2026 Draft-based Approximate Inference for LLMs
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR)
We present a unified framework for approximate inference in long-context LLMs using small draft models to predict token and KV-cache importance. We introduce SpecKV, SpecPC, and SpecKV-PC, enabling more accurate KV-cache and prompt compression while preserving the same efficiency gains in memory usage, latency, and throughput.
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2026 ParallelBench: Understanding the Trade-offs of Parallel Decoding in Diffusion LLMs
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR)
Analyzes the fundamental limitations of parallel decoding in diffusion LLMs and introduces ParallelBench, the first benchmark designed to measure quality degradation caused by token dependency violations. Reveals key speed–quality trade-offs and highlights the need for new decoding strategies.
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2026 Inference-Aligned SFT for Diffusion LLMs via Group-based Trajectory Sampling
ICLR Workshop on Decoding and Generation with Language Models (DeLTa)
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2026 TABED: Test-Time Adaptive Ensemble Drafting for Robust Speculative Decoding in LVLMs
Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL)
We study speculative decoding for Large Vision-Language Models (LVLMs) and benchmark existing drafting strategies across diverse multimodal scenarios. We propose TABED, a training-free adaptive ensemble drafting method that dynamically combines batched drafts, achieving up to 1.74× inference speedup and improved robustness over single-draft approaches.
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2026 UNCAGE: Contrastive Attention Guidance for Masked Generative Transformers in Text-to-Image Generation
IEEE Access
We study compositional text-to-image generation in Masked Generative Transformers, which remain underexplored compared to diffusion models. We propose UNCAGE, a training-free method that leverages contrastive attention guidance to prioritize object-representative tokens during unmasking, improving compositional fidelity with negligible inference overhead.
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2025 State-offset Tuning: State-based Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning for State Space Models
Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL)
We investigate parameter-efficient fine-tuning for State Space Models, where prompt-based approaches such as prompt tuning and prefix tuning are ineffective. We propose state-based PEFT methods, including State-offset Tuning, which directly adjusts model states at each timestep to improve adaptation.
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2025 Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning of State Space Models
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML)
Introduces Sparse Dimension Tuning (SDT), a parameter-efficient fine-tuning method specifically designed for state space models such as Mamba. By combining SDT for SSM modules with LoRA for projection layers, achieves state-of-the-art performance for adapting SSM-based language models with minimal additional parameters.
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2025 Counting Guidance for High Fidelity Text-to-Image Synthesis
Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV) — Oral
We address the challenge of generating the correct number of objects in text-to-image diffusion models. We propose a guidance method that leverages a reference-less counting network and attention-based object masks to steer the denoising process, improving object-count fidelity in generated images.
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2024 Eta Inversion: Designing an Optimal Eta Function for Diffusion-based Real Image Editing
European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV)
We study diffusion inversion for real image editing, where existing methods struggle to balance faithfulness to the source image and alignment with the edit prompt. We propose a diffusion inversion method with time- and region-dependent η control, enabling flexible editing while preserving image fidelity.
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2020 Focus on Defocus: Bridging the Synthetic to Real Domain Gap for Depth Estimation
IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR)
We address the generalization challenge in depth estimation, where models trained on synthetic data often fail on real-world scenes due to domain gaps. We propose a method that leverages domain-invariant defocus blur cues and a permutation-invariant network, enabling models trained on synthetic data to generalize effectively to real images.
Skills
Languages
Certificates
- TOPIK (Test of Proficiency in Korean) — Level 5 - National Institute for International Education (2020)