My name is Raj Bapat, and I am a student and researcher at UCSD interested in AI, Systems and Databases!

class RajBapat
{
private:
    short int age = 20;
public:
    long long int yearsOfCompetitiveProgrammingInCPP = 8;
    std::string collegeName = "UCSD";
    double collegeGPA = 4.0;

    std::vector<std::string> experiences =
        { "SWE Intern at TikTok", "NSF Undergraduate Researcher at UC Davis", "Research Intern at Stanford University" }
    std::vector<std::string> traits =
        { "Systems", "AI/ML", "Database", "Information Retrieval", "SIMD", "CUDA" };
    std::vector<std::string> hobbies =
        { "Community Organizer", "Competitive Programming", "US Squash"};
};

I've been passionate about programming ever since I was 12 years old, when in just a few short weeks I coded Conway's Game of Life from scratch in C++. I've been riding that wave ever since, eventually reaching the top-20 in my grade nationally in USA Computing Olympiad and placing 6th nationally at the Virginia Tech High School Programming Contest! I've been competing in programming contests for the last 8 years including this year as an ICPC team captain and coach.

My interest in algorithms was elevated by a chance conversation I had with the legend himself Professor Donald Knuth (at a Diwali party!), blossoming into multiple research projects across computing from AI/ML & Data Mining to SIMD/AVX intrinsics-based acceleration for Molecular Computing.

• 📋 Currently, I am working as:
  • a SWE Intern at TikTok Inc. building Machine Learning systems at scale for content moderation (my ML platform is now running in TikTok production, processing 100 Million+ ML policy evaluations/day 👏👏)
• 📋 Previously, I was working as:
  • an NSF Undergraduate Researcher in the Molecular Computing Lab at UC Davis
  • a researcher in AI/ML, Approx. Nearest Neightbour Search in SQL Databases
  • a Research Intern in OVAL Virtual Assistant Lab at Stanford University
  • an SWE Intern in Nutanix

📋 Here is some code that you may find useful for your own projects:

• C++ implementation library for 16 advanced algorithms for Competitive Programming
• Hardware-accelerated and portable reference SIMD implementation of Smith Waterman DNA matching algorithm leveraging Google Highway to enable portability across ARM, Intel and other platforms.
• A PostgreSQL vector search RDBMS benchmark for performance and recall analysis of SQL queries with Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search
• Hardware-accelerated SIMD/AVX integrated into Nucliec Acid Designer open source tool
• Real-time sentiment classification using Google Cloud in my research on AI Augmented Mind

I love exploring fields that push the boundaries of our understanding and accelerate future research. Recently, I’ve been thinking about how to speed up bioinformatics algorithms with hardware acceleration, and diving deep into the world of Databases, AI and Information Retrieval.

• Using SIMD to accelerate DNA Design, Raj Bapat, David Doty.
• A Benchmark and an Evaluation for SQL Queries with k-Nearest Neighbor Search, Raj Bapat

My most personally fulfilling projects involve building communities through programming competitions and programming clubs. I co-founded two annual regional competitions in two communities (SF Bay Area and Davis). I'm proud that both competitions continue to be cornerstones of thier respective regional programming communities, engaging 1000s of students yearly.

• Co-founded the first Davis community competitive programming contest in 2023 sponsored by UC Davis CS Department faculty under the guidance of Slobodan Mitrovi ́c, Assistant Professor in CS - contest now in its 2nd year
• Co-founded the first SF Bay Area community programming contest in 2021. I created this as a joint contest between two bay area high schools (Paly & Gunn) to engage students during the pandemic - contest now in its 4th year