Education

My fascination with technology began in childhood, initially limited to playing video games. That perspective shifted when my brother taught me to build a simple calculator in C++, a hands-on experience that opened a new dimension of computers and ignited my passion for programming and problem-solving. This curiosity drove me to pursue an undergraduate degree in computer science and engineering. My analytical foundation was shaped early through UCMAS Abacus classes, earning a consolation prize at the 11th National Abacus & Mental Arithmetic Competition (2011), and honing critical thinking through chess, Sudoku, and mental aptitude contests, reflected in a 95% score in my Secondary School Computer Science Examination.

At one of India's top NAAC-accredited research universities, I broadened my horizons rapidly. At the Anokha Tech Fest "Be a Ninja" Cyber Forensics workshop by Cisco, my team won first place for designing a Smart Car Parking app with sensor-based reservations, CCTV integration, and OTP-based authentication. This sparked a passion for networking, leading me to earn the CCNA certification in Routing & Switching and achieve A/A+ grades in Computer Networks coursework. During a summer internship at ONGC (India's largest crude oil producer), I built an Issue Tracker using PHP & MySQL for their Intranet. I also developed an SEO analysis tool in Python using BeautifulSoup, recognized by NIIT for excellent performance in Programming with Python for Data Science.

In my final year, I co-developed a gesture-based control system using a 3D ConvLSTM model under Dr. Rajathilagam B., achieving ~80% accuracy with minimal latency and addressing GPU starvation via the Gulpio package. Simultaneously, a course on Theory of Computation under Dr. Prakash P. made Finite State Machines click, as enjoyable as solving a game. This foundation led to my final-semester internship with Zoho ZLabs ASR R&D, where I standardized audio formats, cleaned transcriptions, and expanded the benchmark dataset suite by 83%.

After completing my internship at Zoho Corporation, I secured a full-time role in the Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) team at ZLabs, R&D. I leveraged my understanding of FSMs to integrate a Rule-Based Inverse Text Normalization (ITN) system into the ASR pipeline to enhance output readability. Using Pynini, I wrote five grammar rules from scratch and leveraged eleven from NeMo with enhancements for our use cases, building Finite State Transducers (FST) for string transformations — including tasks like redacting profane words. I also led a 4-member team to manually collect ITN data. In addition, I contributed to a 16% increase in the training data suite (~18k hours) and built a Flask-based demo application to run ASR model inference. Beyond these contributions, I developed tools to streamline internal API communication and efficient dataset management, significantly improving cross-team collaboration and operational efficiency.

Currently, I work as a Large Language Models (LLM) Data Engineer at Zoho Corporation. This role is challenging, requiring extensive research, experimentation, and adaptability in the rapidly evolving field of LLMs. Understanding precise data requirements for instruction fine-tuning adds to the complexity. My work involves developing data curation tools, researching open-source datasets and scholarly papers, and optimizing data quality and composition based on experimental insights. Additionally, I evaluate model performance by supervised fine-tuning (SFT) of internal LLMs. This role has enhanced my understanding of how datasets shape a model's learning and how subtle prompt variations can profoundly impact LLMs — experiences that have ignited my passion for advancing AI research and exploring its transformative potential.

Leading the Public Relations department for Anokha 2020 honed my leadership and communication skills across colleges. Organizing the Amrita intercampus cultural fest Sargamritam 2019 strengthened organizational abilities, and volunteering at Amritavarsham 66 reinforced my commitment to community service. Outside work, I channel creativity through digital arts, calligraphy, chess, and tennis. As an avid dog lover, committed to animal welfare, I regularly provide food for stray dogs and care for my own pet, fostering responsibility and empathy.