Student profile

(Optional) No admission application can meet the needs of every individual. If you think additional information or material will give us a more thorough impression of you, please respond below.

Starting around May 2015, I had carpal tunnel and could not type or write. Most homework was dictated to a scribe or speech-to-text software, and throughout junior year I had to use a scribe for all my tests with my 504 plan. I still maintained a rigorous courseload. I began to gradually write in Feb 2016, and began to type in May 2016. By June 2016, I could type and write without help again. 

We know you lead a busy life, full of activities, many of which are required of you. Tell us about something you do simply for the pleasure of it. (94 / <= 100 words)

I slowly pulled out an Altoids can from behind the power box under the towering monument and smiled at the geocache. Geocaching involves hunting for hidden containers using online clues and coordinates. This intertwining of the physical and digital worlds drives me in pursuit of hidden canisters 20 feet up a tree or deep within a cave. To me, finding these caches is like solving a tangible riddle, with its own challenges and rewards. The longer and more frustrating the search, the more rewarding the final find is and the more treasured the memory. 

Although you may not yet know what you want to major in, which department or program at MIT appeals to you and why? (93 / 100 words or fewer)

EECS at MIT seems designed just for me. The world is filled with problems that can be solved by artificial intelligence, and not enough  people to solve them. When my doctor educated me on the hazards of CT scans, I innovated a way to convert MRI images to CT images with deep learning. When my Uber drivers consistently worried over their salaries, I designed a pricing system to profitably help Uber’s passengers and drivers simultaneously with reinforcement learning. I can’t wait to continue learning and experimenting at CSAIL, surrounded by like-minded people. 

At MIT, we bring people together to better the lives of others. MIT students work to improve their communities in different ways, from tackling the world’s biggest challenges to being a good friend. Describe one way in which you have contributed to your community, whether in your family, the classroom, your neighborhood, etc. (247 / 200-250 words)

We stared in exasperation at the screen, and Google Docs seemingly  smirked back as the equations we tried to type turned out uglier than the decades-old Dell computers we were typing on. Volunteer teachers in our middle school math club felt frustrated ploughing through the equation syntax in Google Docs, and we were having trouble creating notes on time.

I felt the same frustration taking e-notes at summer camp, and realized this problem pervaded through my mathematical life and likely others’ too. I saw this as an opportunity, so I spent months perfecting a Google Docs add-on called Auto-LaTeX Equations. My add-on allowed anyone to write LaTeX equations, which automatically render into high-quality images of mathematical equations. For the next month, I enthusiastically described it to everyone I met, and soon every teacher in the middle school math club was using it. Since then, my precalculus teacher has convinced all his classes to use my add-on.

As I began to treasure the nights I stayed up until 4am to fix a bug, I felt intensely satisfied creating something that 40,000 people use to share mathematical ideas. Now, I chase the same passion for solving problems in every endeavor I pursue, like building a bot battle simulator for my computer science students or building a drone to save people's lives with artificial intelligence. Problem solving has transcended beyond just answering questions, and now I embrace every problem as an opportunity to create solutions that positively impact people. 

Describe the world you come from; for example, your family, clubs, school, community, city, or town. How has that world shaped your dreams and aspirations? (249/200-250 words)

On the outside, I’m the stereotype of Silicon Valley -- obsessed with Elon Musk’s latest ventures, acutely aware of startup drama, and up to date on the latest tech despite owning none of it. On closer inspection, these local influences are supplemented by a community of sharers. From my Grandpa's refusal to retire as a professor well into his 70s, to the high school seniors eager to teach projective geometry or segment trees to my curious freshman self, I want to continue the cycle of sharing knowledge forward.

Sharing technology drives much of the work I do. To that end, I co-founded the Internet of Things club with two of my friends. We concentrated on teaching students about hardware and software through hands on projects such as laser tag, a combination lock opener, light-up speakers, and finger tracking gloves. Our club was likened to a curriculum driven class by our advisor; each weekend’s meetup spit out a schematic, parts, and code for Monday’s club session. 

We treated IoT club like our own little startup -- electronics frequently took over my ping pong table for weeks on end, a soldering iron hogged my foosball table, and a portable heater warmed our toes on frosty Sunday evenings. As we wired Arduinos to capacitive grapes, my garage seemed to run its own workshop of creativity powered by kettle corn and nachos. I hope to cultivate this attitude of experimenting with and spreading technology at MIT, and one day lead a startup of my own.

Tell us about the most significant challenge you’ve faced or something important that didn’t go according to plan. How did you manage the situation? (248/200-250 words)

I was the brain; my scribe was the hand. I recited the next physics equation, character by character, and my scribe wrote it down. “Alpha ... no no,  that's omega, alpha is the one like a swirly lowercase A ... perfect!” If I were writing, I could have finished an hour ago. I took a deep breath, realized my impatience wasn’t helping, and breathed out, “Equal sign,” with a smile. Ironically, it was the thing I loved the most, programming, that caused carpal tunnel and forced typing and writing out of my life during junior year. While I initially pined over every missed USACO contest and longed to wake up again at 2am for Russian programming contests, I eventually realized I could try to learn more about hardware and teamwork instead of just code.

I started building a drone in my garage, carefully enunciating variable names to my friends to program. Quite simply, all of us thought that a small flying camera that could control itself was insanely cool. As my garage grew messier and the autonomous drone more complete, I realized that fighting through blown-up batteries and dead-end ideas had resulted in a deep understanding that can only be earned through discovery. 

My injury had driven me to discover new passions such as building drones. As I slowly began to type my own alphas and omegas a year later, I began to see every setback as an opportunity to expand my horizons and experience a new facet of life.

Please tell us more about your cultural background and identity in the space below (100 word limit). If you need more than 100 words, please use the Optional section on Part 2. (My MIT 1.1) (93/87 words)

My Indian culture provides me with opportunities to meet people I wouldn’t have otherwise met and to do things I wouldn’t have otherwise done, through experiences in food, dance, and holidays. The most notable example is my participation in Bombay in the Bay, an Indian and hip-hop dance showcase, since junior year. As I began to explore more Bollywood-infused hip hop for senior year homecoming, I realized that my American values and Indian history are inextricably tied, and I am lucky to have the opportunity to learn and grow from the best in both worlds.

1) Provide a brief description of your research. (871/1500 char)

I built an autonomous drone and novel piloting system for search and rescue in my garage with two of my underclassmen friends. We combined separate motors and frames, remote controls, a guidance system, and code on a Raspberry Pi to make a drone that autonomously locates a target on the ground. After building the drone, I was fortunate to be mentored by Prof. Mykel Kochenderfer at Stanford to locate the resources needed to learn about a reinforcement learning-based Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) framework to help our drone make optimal choices at each step to find the reward on the ground. I learned how to program a POMDP in Julia using the Stanford framework to pilot the drone under uncertainty in movement accuracy and observation accuracy. I wrote an initial draft of the paper and worked with the team to add hardware details. I presented the paper at the IEEE IROS 2017 conference.

2) Summarize your contributions to this project. What were the specific tasks that you were involved in? (665/1500 char)

I was responsible for building the reinforcement learning model and understanding how to apply Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes using Julia to drones. I came up with a method to reduce the state space, making my method more memory efficient than previous methods. My reinforcement learning model found the target 71% faster than a greedy strategy that modeled a human operator. I also helped the other two members of my team design, build, and test the drone. I wrote the initial draft of the paper and collaborated with other team members and Dr. Kochenderfer to revise and edit it. I was the first author on our paper and presented it at IEEE IROS. 

3) What did you learn about the research process and your research interests? (1296/1500 char)

Unlike other forms of academic learning, research does not follow a pre-defined process or even the original plan. Over the course of our project, our drone evolved, and we replaced an off-the-shelf control system with custom parts that were compatible with our software. I am fascinated by drones and the idea that a reinforcement learning program can make better decisions than a human. 

I realized that real research is just another name for exploration. We ran into several easily avoidable mistakes like exploding batteries, but learned far more that way. I found that the research I’m most interested and invested in is the type that personally excites me, and that I can see using in my own life.

4) How many hours per week and for how long did you work on the research?*

List hours per week and dates worked; e.g., 7 hours/week for 6 weeks from June 1 - August 15, 2014. (500 char)

20 hours/week for three weeks from June 6 - June 26, 2016.

20 hours/week for 6 weeks from July 5 - August 18, 2016.

8 hours/week for 5 weeks from August 18, - Sept. 17, 2016.

5) Please tell us the nature of your relationship with the person who helped you find your research project and how they helped you. (160 char)

I worked with Prof. Kochenderfer at Stanford.We brainstormed project ideas. He pointed me to his lab’s code, and suggested approaches to resolve roadblocks.