Syam Sundar K (Syam Sundar Kirubakaran)

Graduate Student, AI
University of California, Los Angeles

Email: syamk [at] ucla [dot] edu
Previous: Yahoo! • Furlenco • Google OSS ( CNCF • Processing Foundation )
[Curriculum Vitae] [Linkedin] [Github]

About

Syam (pronounced: Shyam) is a graduate student at Samueli School of Engineering, UCLA - Interested in Deep Neural Networks, Large Scale Distributed and On-device Machine Learning.

Selected Projects

	Effect of Neural Network Purning on Spurious Correlation Finding layers that can be pruned from a neural network (which is trained on spurious dataset) without affecting the downstream accuracy. Final project for CS 260D at UCLA Tags: Large Scale Machine Learning, Neural Network Pruning, Spurious Dataset [Report]
	Evaluating Salesforce CodeGen 2 Evaluating Accuracy and Robustness and Mitigating Hallucinations in Salesforce CodeGenie AI Code Generation Tool. Final project for my Masters at UCLA Tags: Code Generation AI, Deeplearning, Data Processing, Model Evaluation [Report]
	On-Device Machine Translation with Elaboration and QnA Final project for CS 263 at UCLA Tags: On-Device ML, Machine Translation, Android, GPT-3, Transformers [Report]
	Processing EEG Data - CNN, LSTM and VAE The study evaluates and compares the performance of all 3 methods in classifying and generating motor imagery. Final project for ECE C247 at UCLA Tags: Neural Networks, Deeplearning, Data Processing [Report]
	Project Pluto : Google Lens Clone based on Image Labeling Provides Product recommendations based on things you see. Was developed during my tenure at Furlenco. Tags: Tensorflow Lite, Computer Vision, Image Labeling Techniques [demo] [feedback]
	Social Media Platform on a Serverless Infrastrcuture A Clone of Twitter using Serverless Architecture. Endorsed by Austen Collins, Founder and CEO of Serverless Framework. Tags: Serverless, YAML, Infrastrcuture [github] [architecture]
	Augmented Reality Product Pitcher : Transmuting objects in realtime AR Effectively pitching a complex product to the customers — the bounce story. Was developed during my tenure at Furlenco. Tags: AR, Animators, Interpolators, Android [medium]
	Language Server for Processing Programming Language Provides rich IDE features such as Autocompletion, Code Diagnostics, Goto Definition and so on, which can be extended to any general-purpose editors like Atom, VSCode, etc. Tags: Lanuage Server, Code Editors, Processing [project report] [github]
	Augemnted Reality Renderer for Processing Programming Language AR Renderer that abstracts away all the complex parts of building an AR app LOR reduction from >500 for a typical AR app to 50. 10x improvement. Tags: AR, Renderer, Android [project report] [github] [docs]

Professional Experience

	Software Engineering at Yahoo! (Jan 2024 - Present) All things Fantasy Sports! Worked on a couple of features - Stats breakdown for NFL and Max Games Played feature for NBA, MLB and NHL. Organization: Yahoo! Mentor: Michael Carrano (Senior Software Engineer)
	Senior Software Engineer at Furlenco (Jun 2019 - Aug 2022) Worked on the mobile platform team - responsible for planning and building features on the core app client. Organization: Furlenco Mentors: Aahir Giri (Senior PM), Sheshank Sridharan (Director of Products) [elaborate] Product Owner: furlenco app, warehouse app. built and successfully launched 18+ features that impacted both on pre-subscription users and customers. some prominent features were: "Upfront Checkout" which increased customers checking out with higher tenure by ~60%, thus increasing retention. "Autopay" which reduced friction of making monthly payments significantly, 3x increase in customers who use autopay. built the network layer for "Server-driven KYC" which led to reduction in time-to-completion by a whopping 80% as the ID verifications were automated. ideated, designed, planned, developed and productised "Furlenco Lens" single handedly. responsible for deliverables, code reviews, hiring and tutoring interns.
	Technical Writer at Google Season of Docs 2020 (Winter 2020) Worked on rebuilding content for Kubectl and Kustomize - kubectl.docs.kubernetes.io Organization: Cloud Native Computing Foundation Mentors: Phillip Wittrock (Engineer at Apple), Maciej Szulik (Engineer at Redhat).
	Developer - Google Summer of Code 2019 (Summer 2019) Developed a Language Server for Processing programming language using LSP (Language Server Protocol). Organization: Processing Foundation Mentor: Manindra Moharana (Engineer at Snapchat)
	Developer - Google Summer of Code 2018 (Summer 2018) Developed an Augmented Reality renderer that uses OpenGLES to render virtual objects over real-time camera Image. Organization: Processing Foundation Mentor: Dr. Andrés Colubri (Research Associate at Harvard)

Teaching Experience

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
Jan. 2023 - Mar. 2023
Teaching assistant for CS 31 - Intro to CS with programming in C++.
One of the most enrolled classes at UCLA with students from different majors.
Professor: Bruce Huang

Education

	University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Sep. 2022 - Present Master of Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, 3.9 / 4 Capstone Advisor: Xiang 'Anthony' Chen
	Anna Univeristy, India Aug. 2015 - Apr. 2019 Bachelor of Engineering, Computer Science and Engineering, 8.32 / 10

Selected Awards / Honors / Leadership

Kubernetes Contributor of the Year Award - 2020 from SIG CLI team for contributions to kubectl.docs.kubernetes.io.
Cornell Graduate Merit Scholarship recipient for Masters in Information Sciences - class of 2024.
Vice President of Cyber Club at the Department of Computer Science for 3 years (UG - Sophomore to Final year).

Invited Talks

Talk on Easier Cloud Deployments with Kotlin - Escaping the YAML Hell.
[Speaker Deck]

Talk on Getting Started with Contributing to Open Source Professionally.
[Speaker Deck]