Computer Science and Engineering student at UC Merced
Software Engineer with a focus on Machine Learning and Computer Vision
Welcome! I'm Pranav, a third-year CSE student at the University of California, Merced. My expertise lies in AI and Computer Vision, with a focus on CV for autonomous driving and AgTech. I enjoy learning new aspects of my major, and I frequently explore fields that have CS applications, namely Cognitive Science.
recent projects
SaaS finance web app for young adults and college students. Our application bridges the gap between raw financial data and actionable guidance through natural language interaction with Pluto AI.
Independent research paper on a RAG framework that performs graph-traversal over hierarchical knowledge graphs to deliver structured context to LLMs. Published on ArXiv — many thanks to Professor Yiwei Wang for endorsing me
skills
experience
Implemented local VLMs for Amiga agricultural robot in Dr. Reza Ehsani's lab in collaboration with IoT4Ag. Check out my poster.
- Containerized and deployed a vision-language model (Qwen3 VL 8B) in Docker on an NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin, enabling on-device inference for real-time failure diagnosis on an agriculture Amiga robot from Farm-ng
- Built an event-driven inference pipeline triggered by ROS2 action failures, where the VLM performs visual reasoning over failure context (camera frames, error codes)
Created instructional materials for autonomous vehicle simulation as part of an NSF-funded cybersecurity research project
- Developed a CARLA simulator training module covering environment setup, map loading, and programmatic vehicle spawning via Python scripting
- Built and documented traffic scenario generation workflows using CARLA's client-server architecture, enabling repeatable simulation environments for vehicular network research
Cognitive science lab at UC Merced run by Dr. Colin Holbrook, focused on Human-Robot Interaction research.
- Oversee a lab of 10+ undergraduate researchers, coordinating weekly meetings and managing lab hours
- Lead onboarding for new members, establishing workflows and orienting them to ongoing research project
- Collaborate directly with the PI through discussions on lab operations, research goals, and priorities
- Implementing LLMs into robots to allow for open-ended natural language commands for control
- Handling of software for Engineered Art's Ameca Robot
- Experience with running participants and handling neuroimaging technology for experiments
Learning Computer Science and Engineering at UCM. Despite its solitude, the smaller campus allows me to foster relationships with peers and professors that I don’t believe I could make at many other universities.
- Dean’s Honor List every semester from 2023-2025
- Chancellor’s Honor List for 2024 and 2025
- Vice President and SIG AI Lead for the Association for Computing Machinery
