Tenzile Berkin Cilingiroglu, Ph.D.

Principal AI Engineer · Forward-deployed ML across data centers, advanced manufacturing, and complex hardware.

New York, NY · LinkedIn · Google Scholar

About

I’m a Principal AI Engineer at Arena Physica, where I architect the core reasoning of Arena’s agentic product. I’ve operated as Head of ML at both Arena and Ditto, owning hiring and compensation for the ML org.

My career has run on two tracks. As a deployer: forward-deploying AI at Arena Physica across data centers, advanced manufacturing, complex hardware, and revenue systems; directing real-time virtual try-on at Ditto across web and mobile; and productionizing computer vision and image-fusion algorithms at Thermo Fisher / FEI / DCG Systems for the inspection tools used at the world’s leading semiconductor fabs. As a researcher: six years at Boston University across the Information Sciences & Systems Lab and the Optical Characterization & Nanophotonics Lab, plus an M.S. at Koç University — 10+ peer-reviewed papers (Optics Express, ISTFA, DATE, ICASSP, ICIP) and four US patents in optical fault analysis, super-resolution, and AR fitting.

I operate where the research stops and the customer begins: framing the problem with stakeholders, shipping the first usable model in weeks, and iterating in the real environment until the metric moves. I learn each customer’s domain as deeply as their own engineers, and I bring a researcher’s rigor to evaluation, ablation, and what counts as evidence.

Across that work I’ve shipped agentic systems, deep learning, and classical ML/CV in roughly equal measure — equally at home in all three.

Selected Deployments

A non-exhaustive view of enterprise systems I’ve led or built end-to-end — from on-site customer scoping through production rollout and monitoring — and the foundational research underneath them.

PCB Testing & Design

AI copilot for Electrical Engineers

Arena Physica · Principal AI Engineer

Most recent deployment, owned end-to-end across three pillars — core agentic architecture, the data layer, and the systematic-eval stack — built to make Electrical Engineers dramatically faster at PCB design and testing.

Approach: custom data structures for efficient agent context handling over PCB-native artifacts · systematic evals and self-improving agentic systems · close collaboration with domain EE experts · forward-deployment with users to showcase capabilities and iterate quickly
Data Centers

Anomaly detection at hyperscale

Arena Physica · Principal AI Engineer

End-to-end ownership of a high-priority anomaly-detection deployment over multi-node GPU and infrastructure telemetry — architecture, evaluation harness, and the on-site customer loop.

Approach: anomaly detection across unstructured server logs and time-series telemetry · agentic triage · multi-agent architecture · structured eval · efficient context handling via smart log compression and code execution · technical-documentation ingestion
Complex Hardware

Agentic systems for drones and flight systems

Arena Physica · Lead ML Scientist & Head of ML

LangGraph-based multi-agent architectures for autonomous issue identification and resolution across drone fleets and flight systems — built to make hardware and systems engineers dramatically faster on complex operational workflows.

Approach: multi-agent architecture · LangGraph · tool-use · code execution · retrieval · structured evaluation · production reliability patterns
Advanced Manufacturing

Yield optimization, anomaly alerts, tuning & validation

Arena Physica · Lead ML Scientist & Head of ML

A trio of deployments on advanced-manufacturing and hardware-validation lines: dynamic machine-parameter selection lifting yield by 3–5% on contact-lens production; physics-aware anomaly detection on liquid-aluminum casting that reduced false-alarm rates and surfaced defect modes operators had previously missed; and hyperparameter tuning for next-generation GPUs that accelerated multi-feature validation and compressed time-to-market.

Approach: physics-informed ML · deep learning · graph neural networks · contextual bandits · Bayesian optimization · time-series anomaly · model explainability · alerting pipelines
Post-Silicon Validation

Video artifact detection for high-performance GPUs

Arena Physica · Lead ML Scientist & Head of ML

Computer-vision pipelines that detect screen pixel-level artifacts and glitches in full-HD 60 Hz video output from high-performance gaming GPUs — deployed inside post-silicon feature optimization to accelerate validation and tuning of new silicon.

Approach: deep CV · distributed training · streaming inference · synthetic and real data generation pipelines
Revenue Systems · CPG

Dynamic pricing, recommendations, sales-force tasking

Arena Physica · Lead ML Scientist & Head of ML

Multi-arm bandit pricing, product recommendations, and sales-force action prioritization for CPG accounts — multi-$M annualized revenue uplift across deployments.

Approach: deep learning · recommendation systems · contextual & multi-arm bandits · uplift modeling · forecasting · simultaneous A/B testing of competing policies in production
AR Try-On

Real-time virtual try-on for eyewear

Ditto · Director of Research & Research Engineer · 2019 – 2021

3D face reconstruction, facial landmarking, face-shape classification, and PD/face-width estimation — deployed across web and mobile under strict latency budgets, lifting fit accuracy and conversion for partner retailers.

Approach: deep learning · 3D face reconstruction · landmark detection · classification · cross-platform inference
Patents: US11960146B2 (granted 2024) · US App. 20230360350
Semiconductor Fault Analysis

Super-resolution & CV in commercial inspection tools

Thermo Fisher · FEI · DCG Systems · 2015 – 2019

Productionized super-resolution, image fusion, CAD-to-image registration, denoising, and SEM object-detection algorithms inside commercial inspection frameworks used at the world’s leading fabs — methods that originated in my Ph.D. research at Boston University.

Approach: sparse coding · dictionary learning · image fusion · optical-system simulation
Patents: US20180293346 · US App. 20200333394
Papers: ISTFA 2018, 2014, 2012 · Optics Express 2015 · DATE 2015 · ICASSP 2013
Foundational Research

Sparse-coding super-resolution & anomaly detection

Boston University · Ph.D. Research Assistant · 2009 – 2015

Cross-disciplinary research at the intersection of photonics, integrated circuits, and machine learning — sparse-coding and dictionary-learning methods for super-resolution in IC microscopy, biomass estimation in interferometric microscopy, and feature selection for anomaly detection in surveillance video. Some of the methods I developed here became the basis for productionized algorithms at DCG / FEI / Thermo Fisher and two US patents.

Labs: Information Sciences & Systems Lab · Optical Characterization & Nanophotonics Lab
Output: 6+ peer-reviewed papers (Optics Express, ISTFA, DATE, ICASSP) · foundation for two US patents

Patents

Selected Publications

Full list on Google Scholar.