It is with a heavy heart that we must share with you the passing of our dear friend and colleague, Tathagata Bandyopadhyay, on Friday, September 4th.  

In December 2025, Tatha joined the Autonomous Vision Group.  He coordinated the Scholar Inbox project’s conference planner, which provides custom programs for conference attendees.  He quickly showed interest in the group’s research. Most recently, he began working on Evolving Memory, a research project exploring how video generation models can maintain and update memories of objects and events over time to generate more coherent videos.

Tatha was one of the hardest workers we know.  Nevertheless, he had many pursuits and hobbies outside of his research, including among other things, repairing and building electronics and microcomputers, HAM radios, hiking, cooking, writing poetry, and maintaining his extensive collection of fountain pens and inks. Tatha held three patents already at a very young age.  He was quick to join our group’s social events and was an active member of the tight-knit Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh community in Munich.  Tatha brought life to AVG and generously shared with us experiences of his time growing up in West Bengal, India and studying for his bachelor's at Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology in Bhubaneswar, Odisha.  

Tatha’s passing leaves a giant gap in our group that cannot be filled.  His mischievous smile and joy for the small things in life as well as his many insights in research will be greatly missed at our lunch table and in our lab’s daily life.