Beyond Academics
Outside of research and engineering, a few things keep me grounded.
Squash
I enjoy playing squash in the evenings. It is a good way to reset after a day of research and coding.
🧩 Jigsaw Puzzles and Lego
I enjoy working on large jigsaw puzzles and Lego sets. The bigger and more intricate, the better. For me, the appeal is in gradually turning many small pieces into something coherent and complete.
🍳 KitchenCompanion
KitchenCompanion is a voice-based cooking assistant I built as a side project using LiveKit and retrieval-augmented generation over cookbook PDFs. It lets users ask recipe-related questions hands-free while cooking.
The project started as a weekend experiment and became a deeper exploration of real-time audio pipelines, voice interaction, and grounding language models in structured documents.
🌍 Why I Build What I Build
Much of my work centers on language: how people speak, write, learn, and receive feedback. That focus is not accidental. I am drawn to problems where AI can reduce friction for people who are often underserved by existing tools, including non-native speakers, under-resourced learners, and communities whose needs are not fully reflected in standard language technologies.