Building big functions [neural nets] from scratch, or orchestrating big and small ones [agents]. Obsessed with making them more human-like… constantly experimenting, writing what’s learned, and recharging through nature, cycling, and hiking.
Work & Education
AI Engineer
Makora (Formerly Mako)
Aug 2025 - Present
Working on Fine-tuning LLMs (SFT/RFT), agentic workflows for kernel gen across CUDA/HIP/Triton.
Research & Teaching Assistant
University at Buffalo, SUNY
Aug 2024 - Aug 2025
Led CV/DL research (2 papers published, Best Research Award), mentored 200+ students on Big Data/Spark.
Founder
Scoleaf
Dec 2024 - Aug 2025
Built AI tutor (1K+ users); implemented agentic orchestration, async streaming, and multimodal stacks.
Contributor
9thGen AI
Feb 2025 - May 2025
Contributed to the development of commercial agentic AI voice agents.
Master of Science in Computer Science (3.8 / 4.0)
University at Buffalo, SUNY
Aug 2023 - Jan 2025
Research Assistant
Vellore Institute of Technology
2022 - 2023
Published journal on email spoofing/vulnerabilities analyzed malware exploits and created 11 mitigation plans.
B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering (8.7 / 10)
Vellore Institute of Technology
2019 - 2023
Skills
Python · Java · SQL · git · C++
Open Source Models
Trained version ofLlama-3.2-3B for sentence-level hallucination detection, outperforming DeepSeek R1.
Fine-tuned on 18k PyTorch-Triton pairs via LoRA, achieving 98.3% accuracy for Triton kernel generation.
Fine-tuned 256M VLM that converts handwritten equations to LaTeX.
Three frozen vision encoders (CLIP, ViT, I-JEPA) stitched into Qwen-0.5B via trainable projectors + LoRA.
1.5B scale-up of the encoder-stitching experiment — bigger LLM, clearer embedding signal.
Blog
These blogs are posted on my Substack. (See my previous Medium articles here @teendifferent)
The Revival of Predictive Coding
Introducing EqPropMomentum: A physics-grounded optimizer for biologically plausible AI.
Adaptive Attention at Inference Time: Does It Actually Work?
A hypernetwork that rewires GPT's value heads on every forward pass. And the answer is... not straightforward.
Zero RL - From Words to Worlds
Automating the least glamorous, most expensive part of reinforcement learning: building the world.
Stitching Vision into LLMs: A Comparative Analysis of Embedding Spaces
Building a VLM from scratch using model stitching and LoRA — comparing CLIP's language alignment vs. I-JEPA's world modeling.
apply_chat_template() Is the Safety Switch
How a Single Function Call Gates Safety Alignment in Gemma, Qwen, and Other Open-Source LLMs
AI 2025 Retrospective: The Static Graph Ceiling
My thoughts on the frontier labs' gatekeeping, the rise of the app layer, and why we need open algorithms, not just open weights.
Sample-Tuned Rank-Augmented Weights
An experiment in making neural networks rewrite themselves for every single input. Inspired by the human brain.
Your Features Aren’t What You Think They Are
Evaluating Local Feature Attribution and Decision Fidelity in Deep Vision Models via Perturbation-Based Explanations
Ground Zero
New phase, new experiments.
Publications
Adaptive Driver Assistance: Context-based Approach to Pedestrian Safety
Submitted for review | Preprint - TechRxiv
Mapping Crime Dynamics: Integrating Textual, Spatial, and Temporal Perspectives
IEEE UEMCON 2024
A comprehensive examination of email spoofing: Issues and prospects for email security
Computers & Security Journal (Elsevier) 2023
A Traffic Control System
Patent 2023
Projects
Experimental system-wide AI autocomplete that uses Gemini Flash with visual context for smarter, app-agnostic suggestions.
Real-time spatial awareness tool for the visually impaired, delivering depth and object tracking under 4ms, 15–25x faster than leading models.
Real-time ingredient detection recipe generation with nutritional information. Cuts costs, saves time, and inspires home cooking.
Efficient facial recognition using Prototypical & Siamese Networks. High-accuracy recognition with limited data for secure verification systems.
Optimizes medical supply delivery in hospitals using RL. Ensures timely delivery of medical supplies, enhancing patient care.
Auto-annotate custom datasets for object detection using Grounding DINO. Speeds up box labeling with zero-shot detection for rare or unseen objects.
A personalized AI assistant with RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation). Answers questions based on personal documents, uses vector stores for fast and accurate retrieval.
Enhances predictive policing by analyzing crime data. Optimizes law enforcement resource allocation.
RL in Squirrel Maze & Stock Trader for strategic learning and decision-making. Perfect for testing RL in real-world-inspired scenarios.
Genre classification with ANN, CNN, and Transfer Learning on Mel spectrograms. Ideal for exploring deep learning in complex audio classification.
Implements data loss prevention and privileged identity management. Ensures compliance and security.
Deployment steps for CrowdSec, an SOAR basedintrusion prevention system. Enhances collective security.
Custom DBMS for Formula 1 data management. Enhances efficiency and decision-making powered by PostgreSQL.
Connect
Feel free to contact me at iamtarunreddi@gmail.com