About Me

Where It Started

I grew up around medicine. Both of my parents are physicians, so hospitals, procedures, and medical terminology were just part of the background of my childhood. Science and math came naturally to me, and for most of high school I was set on following the same path: pre-med, medical school, the whole track.

But I always had this pull toward the engineering side of things. I loved algorithm design and the math behind building systems. When I got to Hopkins and started as a Neuroscience major on the pre-med track, that tension didn't go away; it got louder. I spent my first year going back and forth between pure medicine and biotech before realizing that what I actually wanted was to build tools for understanding biological systems, not just study them clinically.

So I added Computer Science with a focus on machine learning and AI. That decision reframed everything. Now instead of asking "how does the brain work?", I get to ask "how do we build systems that help us figure that out?"

Why the Brain

The brain has always struck me as the most complex and essential organ we have, and honestly, one of the least understood. The more I studied neuroscience, the more I realized how much we still don't know about how it governs not just movement and sensation, but motivation, emotion, and daily cognitive function.

That understanding became personal when I underwent neurosurgery to remove a pilocytic astrocytoma from my cerebellar region, a tumor that had been growing for over five years. The cerebellum is classically associated with balance and coordination, but what I experienced went well beyond that. It affected my motivation, my emotions, my day-to-day energy in ways that highlighted just how interconnected the brain really is. Regions don't operate in isolation the way textbooks sometimes suggest.

That experience didn't change my direction; it reinforced it. I want to develop neurotechnologies and ML systems that can assist with things like early tumor identification, movement disorders, memory, and emotional regulation. The brain is far more complex than any single model can capture, and that's exactly what makes the problem worth working on.

What I'm Working Toward

After Hopkins, I'm planning to pursue a PhD in computational neuroscience or applied machine learning. I'm also drawn to industry research; the emerging intersection of biotechnology and ML is moving fast, and I want to be in the thick of it. Whether that's in a lab or at a company, the goal is the same: gain deep, hands-on experience building systems that push the field forward.

Right now, I'm focused on getting as much research and engineering experience as I can. I'm building TremorML, an ML pipeline for classifying neurological tremor types from wearable sensor data, and NeuroScan, a full-stack brain tumor MRI classifier using transfer learning with EfficientNet-B0, FastAPI, and Supabase. I'm also starting work on RLVR-Comparison with Dr. Raman Arora, a research project comparing reinforcement learning alignment methods (PPO, GRPO, and DPO) for language models on tasks with verifiable rewards, using GSM8K math problems as the evaluation benchmark. Beyond that, I've contributed to Delineo, JHU's infectious disease simulation engine, and co-founded Affordable Tutoring Solutions as CTO, building EdTech infrastructure to serve students from underserved communities.

Outside the Lab

I'm not just a CS and neuro person. I practiced karate for ten years growing up and earned my Junior Black Belt. I've been playing classical piano since around 2009 and performed at Carnegie Hall in 2023. I briefly picked up clarinet and violin too, though neither stuck the way piano did.

These days, I spend a lot of time in the gym; weightlifting and general fitness are a big part of my routine. I care a lot about physical health, diet, and mental wellness. Self-improvement is something I take seriously, both in and out of academics.

I've also been tutoring since elementary school. It's something I genuinely enjoy. I started Affordable Tutoring Solutions with a co-founder the summer after high school, and we still run it today. Teaching is one of those things that just comes naturally to me, and helping people work through problems is its own kind of reward.

Education

Highlights

Research Interests