Hello there!

I am Avinash, I am a 2nd year master’s student studying Information Technology & Analytics at Rutgers University in the culturally diverse garden state.

This is my story!

I have always possessed entrepreneurial tendencies, right from the age of ten when I sold cricket gear in my cricket camp to my fellow players to Launching my very own data driven startup after graduating from IIT Madras.  Even now, I often take up odd business opportunities to earn some useful spending money.  I Started investing in cryptocurrencies back in 2017, My idea is to make some money out of it, what started as a harmless research for planning investment strategies slowly became an obsession and I realized the disruptive nature of blockchain technology and made money. This penchant for identifying and exploiting new opportunities is what defines me.

Hardhat

I focused on building a strong fundamental background during my Dual Degree in Chemical Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M). This also presented me with an opportunity to explore domains and subject areas from various fields and provided me with strong and comprehensive background in mathematics and business. My strong affinity for computers and numbers led me to my master’s project, ‘Optimization of acoustic cleaning parameters for semiconductor surfaces.’

I was first formally introduced to analytics during my last year of college, and as a part of my thesis, I conducted 125 experiments. During my thesis, I tabulated, computed, and gleaned information from vast swaths of data. Much of my analysis involved merging empirical findings and theoretical assumptions to generate insights.

In order to gain this critical skill-set I took a course under Prof. Chidambaram in my penultimate semester. This was my first structured coursework in Analytics. I subsequently used techniques learnt in this Course for process design and analysis of data with Matlab. I am highly influenced with the power of teasing information and subtle trends. Intrinsically motivated by a desire to master analytical tools, upon graduation, I signed up on various online courses, which would help me in building my start up.

Suit

After graduating from IIT Madras, my friends and I launched a start up on an online television with individual user compatible programmes. I used movie genres to perform hierarchical clustering in R and created a movie recommendation system. To rate new movies, a bag of words approach was utilized for building dataset and the construction of a random forest model for predicting sentiment by using Twitter data. During this period, we explored VR technologies for developing innovative, interactive ways for content consumption.

By late 2015, when our VR platform generated considerable interest from investors, we went on to establish ourselves as Crion Tech, a VR based start-up.  This platform delivered technical training modules in virtual reality and augmented reality for industries. Crion Tech technologies provides virtual training in machinery, service and maintenance, process simulations, emergency response training. I worked as the business development lead, I wrote crawling bots to gather data on topics of interest and then analysed them—then used that information as key insights in investor meetings and decision making on product features. Which helped us to raise seed fund worth 1 million rupees from the IIT-M Incubation cell. This exposure has made me familiar with the intense culture of a start up, team management, and production level software development.

Geek

After commencing my masters in Information Technology and Analytics at Rutgers university,  I started working as graduate associate at Institute for Data Science, Learning, and Applications at Rutgers, applying Deep Learning for predictive crime mapping, natural language processing, and developing resource management tools for Newark Mayor’s office.

My overarching goal is to be a part of the Artificial Revolution of our times. I research to improve my understanding of machines and the human mind in general, and I take inspiration from everywhere into my data science work. My interests lie in application of AI in Business Intelligence, Healthcare, Finance and Sports, and to work on real-life data driven projects. In the long term, I see my self working on projects that are meaningful, proactive, and will definitely contribute to the quality of life.

To learn more about my experiences as a student, entrepreneur and investor check out my resume and LinkedIn profile.

 

 

“Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.”

-Napoleon Bonaparte