--- title: "Wasi Uddin Ahmad — author profile and papers" description: "Wasi Uddin Ahmad, Nvidia: 3 papers on Elamur Research (2021–2022), h-index 21 — affiliations, topics, co-authors and who cites them in our library." canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/wasi-uddin-ahmad/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/wasi-uddin-ahmad/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [authors](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/) / Wasi Uddin Ahmad # Wasi Uddin Ahmad Wasi Uddin Ahmad works on pretrained language models for settings that standard English text models handle poorly: source code written alongside developer prose, and languages with few NLP resources. Their papers here ask how pretraining objectives, careful data selection and explicit linguistic structure can make transformer encoders and encoder-decoders more useful in these settings. The work combines model design with new benchmarks for evaluation. The most cited of these papers, [Unified Pre-training for Program Understanding and Generation](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/ahmad-2021-unified-pre-training-program-understanding/) (2021), introduced PLBART. It is a BART-style encoder-decoder trained by denoising on unlabeled Java and Python functions together with English StackOverflow posts. The aim was to support code summarization, code generation and translation between programming languages without large parallel corpora. Also from 2021, [Syntax-augmented Multilingual BERT](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/ahmad-2021-syntax-augmented-multilingual-bert-cross/) adds a small graph attention network over Universal Dependencies trees to mBERT. It tests whether shared syntactic structure can narrow word-order differences between languages in zero-shot cross-lingual transfer. The newest work, [BanglaBERT](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/bhattacharjee-2022-banglabert-language-model-pretraining-benchmarks/) (2022), moves toward a dedicated encoder for Bangla, a widely spoken language that is underserved by large multilingual models. The pretraining text comes from selected websites ranked by popularity and quality rather than from noisy public web dumps. The tokenizer's alphabet extends beyond the Bangla script so that romanized and code-switched input is still handled. The paper also builds an inexpensive inference dataset, using machine-translated training examples filtered by LaBSE similarity alongside human-translated evaluation sets. These choices connect the work to [low-resource languages](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/low-resource-languages/) and [evaluation and benchmarks](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/evaluation-benchmarks/). Ahmad is a Senior Research Scientist at [Nvidia](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/companies/nvidia/) in Santa Clara. Earlier, Ahmad was an applied scientist at AWS AI Labs from 2021 to 2024 and a graduate student researcher in computer science at the [University of California, Los Angeles](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-california-los-angeles/). Before that came a master's degree at the [University of Virginia](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-virginia/). Several papers also carry a Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology affiliation, which fits the Bangla work. Co-authors on the papers here include [Kai-Wei Chang](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/kai-wei-chang/) and [Md Saiful Islam](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/md-saiful-islam/). The work spans [language models and pretraining](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/language-models/) and [code and programming languages](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/code-and-programming/). Wasi Uddin Ahmad has 3 papers in our library, in 2021–2022, most of them on [Language models & pretraining](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/language-models/), [Multilingual & cross-lingual NLP](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/multilingual-nlp/), [Low-resource languages](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/low-resource-languages/); often with [Kai-Wei Chang](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/kai-wei-chang/), [Haoran Li](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/haoran-li/), [Md Saiful Islam](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/md-saiful-islam/). 3 papers in our library · 2021–2022 [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/A5103968040) · [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8171-9583) · [Wikidata](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q57428964) · [**h-index 21**](https://openalex.org/authors/A5103968040) · [80 works](https://openalex.org/works?filter=author.id:A5103968040) · [2,251 citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=author.id:A5103968040&sort=cited_by_count:desc) OpenAlex, 2026-10-14 [📄 3 works in our library](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/wasi-uddin-ahmad/#papers) · [🔗 813 citations in our library](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/wasi-uddin-ahmad/cited-by/) · [15 more in our library without a page yet](#also) · [⭐ Paper Star rank #1885](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/paper-stars/page/19/#star-1885) The profile is the library's match of the name; two people with one name are not always told apart. Elsewhere: [Google Scholar](https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=search_authors&mauthors=Wasi+Uddin+Ahmad) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/search?q=Wasi+Uddin+Ahmad) · [dblp](https://dblp.org/search?q=Wasi+Uddin+Ahmad) · [ACL Anthology](https://aclanthology.org/search/?q=Wasi+Uddin+Ahmad) ## Affiliations [🏢**Nvidia** Santa Clara · United States 2024–2026 · 3 papersEmployment since 2024 · Senior Research Scientist*current*](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/companies/nvidia/) · [🎓**University of California, Los Angeles** Los Angeles · United States 2017–2023 · 34 papersEmployment 2017–2021 · Graduate Student Researcher, Computer Science](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-california-los-angeles/) · [🏢**Amazon** Seattle · United States 2022–2024 · 6 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/companies/amazon/) · [🎓**Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology** Dhaka · Bangladesh 2021–2024 · 5 papers](https://ror.org/05a1qpv97) · [🏢**Nvidia** Reading · United Kingdom 2024–2025 · 2 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/companies/nvidia-united-kingdom/) · [🎓**University of Virginia** Charlottesville · United States 2015–2020 · 2 papersEducation 2015–2017 · Masters of Computer Science, Computer Science](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-virginia/) 🏛️**AWS AI Labs** San Jose · [United States](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/countries/united-states/) 2021–2024Employment 2021–2024 · Applied Scientist From the bylines of their papers (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14), ORCID and Wikidata; institutions on papers are matched by machine. ## Concepts, shelves and topics Of its works in our library: the number of works on each and its rating among them. 📚 Shelves 3[Computing & GPUs · 1 work](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/computing/) · [Natural language processing · 1 work](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/nlp/) · [Linguistics & languages · 1 work](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/linguistics/) 🧭 Topics 6[Language models & pretraining · 2 works](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/language-models/) · [Code & programming languages · 1 work](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/code-and-programming/) · [Evaluation & benchmarks · 1 work](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/evaluation-benchmarks/) · [Low-resource languages · 1 work](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/low-resource-languages/) · [Multilingual & cross-lingual NLP · 1 work](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/multilingual-nlp/) · [Syntax & grammar formalisms · 1 work](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/syntax-grammar/) ## Works by year ### 2020s [**2022** 1 paper](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/bhattacharjee-2022-banglabert-language-model-pretraining-benchmarks/) · [**2021** 2 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/wasi-uddin-ahmad/year/2021/) ## Papers The most cited first (OpenAlex and our library). 1. **[Unified Pre-training for Program Understanding and Generation](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/ahmad-2021-unified-pre-training-program-understanding/)** *(2021 · 746 citations)* Software engineering tasks such as describing code in English, writing code from a description, and porting code between programming languages all depend on understanding both source code and developer-style natural language. 2. **[BanglaBERT: Language Model Pretraining and Benchmarks for Low-Resource Language Understanding Evaluation in Bangla](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/bhattacharjee-2022-banglabert-language-model-pretraining-benchmarks/)** *(2022 · 296 citations)* Bangla has hundreds of millions of native speakers but few NLP resources. Practitioners have mostly fine-tuned large multilingual models, which are costly to adapt and often weak on low-resource languages. The authors address this by building a dedicated Bangla encoder. 3. **[Syntax-augmented Multilingual BERT for Cross-lingual Transfer](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/ahmad-2021-syntax-augmented-multilingual-bert-cross/)** *(2021 · 42 citations)* The authors test whether explicitly added universal syntax helps the multilingual encoder mBERT in zero-shot cross-lingual transfer. ## Also in our library 15 more works of theirs are in our library without a page here yet; they will appear as we publish them. ## Co-authors here 4 co-authors with a page, the most papers together first. - [Kai-Wei Chang](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/kai-wei-chang/) ×2 - [Haoran Li](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/haoran-li/) - [Md Saiful Islam](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/md-saiful-islam/) - [Yashar Mehdad](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/yashar-mehdad/) ## Cited by Papers of our library cite their works 813 times (of the 140,884 papers whose bibliographies we read); [39 citing papers with a page here →](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/wasi-uddin-ahmad/cited-by/). Updated 23 October 2026