My Activities

Debate

Leadership: Head Captain, Reservoir High School Speech and Debate team.

Accolades:

• 7x National Qualifier across 3 events

• LD debate State Champion

• NCFL Nationals LD Double-Octofinalist (#17/250+)

• NSDA Nationals LD Triple-Octofinalist (#50/250+)

• NSDA Superior Distinction Degree

• NSDA Academic All-American

• NSDA #3 LD Debater in Maryland

Details: I personally compete in LD, PF, and Congressional debate. I've taught underclassmen esoteric debate philosophy (deontology, cosmopolitanism, rights theories). I'm a huge proponent of AI in debate for research and training (See Cosmos below & my technical projects), and I train fellow students in using AI ethically. Also, I manage our social media.

As a debater, I've learned about International Relations, Healthcare policy, Climate Change, Education, Immigration, Criminal Justice, Space Exploration, and countless other sociopolitical issues. When I'm not standing behind a podium, I try to apply my debate background at the dinner table, one relative at a time. Progress is slow but steady.

DECA

Leadership: Maryland DECA Outreach Student Task Force Director, Reservoir HS State Liaison; Maryland DECA State Executive Vice President: Region 3 (former), Reservoir HS Chapter President (former).

Accolades:  Top 10 International Finalist in the Professional Selling event @ the DECA International Career Development Conference.

Student Task Force initiatives: 
I'm currently leading a 7-person team responsible for facilitating fundraising and networking initiatives alongside the state executive team. We've compiled sponsorship packages, written grant proposals, and conducted professional outreach.

Region 3 VP Accomplishments:

• Facilitated training/networking events for 1300+ members and 30+ chapters in MD.

• Executed 2024 Region 3 conference for over 40+ Howard County students.

• Co-executed 2024 SCDC conference for 650+ Maryland students.

• Helped establish chapters in schools across Region 3.

• Doubled school chapter membership (2024-25).

Robotics

Leadership: Team Captain and Lead Coder, FTC Team 5709 Gators.

Accolades: 2x regional qualifier semifinalists, Judge's award

Details: As captain, I lead training initiatives and workshops, assist fundraising efforts, and spearhead brainstorming sessions. I also directed the technical development of our team's robot, coordinating mechanical, electrical, software, and auxiliary teams throughout the season. I directly lead the software team, writing autonomous computer vision code and driver-controlled TeleOp code in Java (visible on my GitHub). I also drive our robot at competitions.

Our team receives minimal funding from Reservoir, so as captain, I've strived to maximize innovation on a low budget. Instead of purchasing expensive new motors to replace older, slower ones, I engineered custom PID controls and other software solutions to automatically adjust power levels in our robots and enhance stability.

Class Board

Leadership: Secretary, Reservoir HS Class of 2025 Board

Initiatives:

• Managing social media posts

• Facilitating Spirit Week events

• Supporting pep rallies and other school events

• Planning senior crab feast, festivities, prom, etc.

JYOC

Leadership: Teacher's Aide @ the Jain Society of Metro Washington (JSMW) Sunday School;
Executive Committee Chair @  the Jain Youth Of the Capital (JYOC), a youth group operating under JSMW (former)

Accolades: Gold Presidential Volunteer Service Award (200+ hours), Jain Academic Bowl Finalist

Service Initiatives: I directed a team of 5 in organizing large service events:

• Adopt-A-Road highway cleanups (30+ bags of trash)

• Canned Food Drives (250+ food items donated)

• Blanket-making drives, care packages, clothing drives, and more.

I also led JYOC in hosting social and religious events, working to foster community among Jain youth in the DMV area. These included weekend retreats, philosophical debates and discussions, and SkyZone parties.

Scouting

Leadership: Senior Patrol Leader (former) @ Scouts BSA Troop 540 based in Fulton, Maryland.

Accolades: Eagle Scout, Order of the Arrow, American Legion Good Citizen Citation.

Details: I organized weekly troop meetings for 70+ scouts aged 10-18, orchestrated quarterly Courts of Honor, led biweekly patrol leader councils to plan meetings and campouts, and finally led multi-day campouts.

Service Initiatives: As a scout, I led and joined trail restorations, Veterans Day parades, misc. Eagle Scout projects, stream cleanups, food distributions, and more.

Eagle Scout Project: I partnered with the Community Ecology Institute (CEI) to design and assembled dozens of tree-planting workshop kits. These kits simplified the planting process by compiling pre-sorted materials, clear instructions, and planting tools. Then, I identified planting locations at local schools and underserved neighborhoods that couldn’t afford expensive landscaping. This upcoming year, the CEI will use my kits to host tree plantings across the county.

Policymaking

US Senate Youth Program: I was recently selected as one of Maryland's two delegates to the prestigious United States Senate Youth Program through a competitive interview and examination process. This spring, I'll meet with U.S. Senators, Supreme Court Justices, and senior government officials to engage firsthand with the federal legislative process. I was also awarded a $10,000 scholarship from the Hearst Foundation.

Maryland General Assembly Student Page Program: I was recently selected as one of Howard County's delegates to the MGA Student Page Program. This spring, I will spend 2 weeks in Annapolis shadowing state legislators while the MGA is in session.

Policy Intern @ the Howard County Council: As a policy intern, I researched Howard County’s sustainability action plan, testified in favor of building electrification resolutions, and drafted environmental newsletter articles to inform residents. 

By Fall 2025, I’ll have explored policymaking at the local, state, and federal levels firsthand.

Advocacy + Activism

Educational Equity: When debate transportation funding was cut from the FY2025 Howard County Public School System budget, I knew it would pose barriers for students without access to independent transportation. I helped lead students in testifying against the decision. Our efforts resulted in $10,000 of funding being reinstated, allowing county-wide participation in Speech and Debate.

I've also published research on improving equitable representation in G/T education programs.

Sustainability: Respect for nature is central to my values as a Jain, a vegetarian, and an Eagle Scout. I've strived to directly improve our environment by leading various service initiatives (See: JYOC & Scouts). 

I've also used policy as a mechanism for environmental action (See: Policy Intern @ the Howard County Council). In Jan. 2023, I testified in favor of local resolution CB-5, encouraging building electrification in new Howard County developments.

Cosmos

Cosmos is an AI-powered debate training platform (See here). As a software engineering intern at Cosmos, I've supported both project development and management.

Technical Accomplishments: Using Unity Engine and C#, I developed demonstration prototypes used to secure massive international partnerships with debate organizations such as the Oxford Union. I've also programmed debate logic and scripting for World Schools Debate and other formats. On the backend, I've initialized Amazon Web Services databases to store user data and speech transcripts.

Business Accomplishments: I've conducted market research to identify leading debate academies, urban debate leagues, and national tournaments that could serve as avenues for user recruitment, partnerships, and advertisement. 

ASPIRE

As one of ~15% of applicants admitted to the ASPIRE program, I’ve spent 18 months assisting research and development at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab.

During this time, I worked on various AI, robotics, and computer science projects, including:

• Programming robots to autonomously follow targets across a surface

• Conducting a literature review of prompt-engineering techniques

• Building a custom Linux terminal with a keylogger in C++

• Training AI Image classifiers to detect hand shapes (rock, paper, scissors)

• Using web-scraping and LLMS to develop a debate research tool

I'm currently researching Adversarial Attacks on AI models, and I intend to present my work at the ASPIRE showcase this June.

Selected projects can be seen here.

Research

My research interests lie in Applied AI. In particular, I'm intrigued by interdisciplinary applications of machine learning in psychology, philosophy, politics, and other humanistic domains.

As a Research Intern @ UMD, I'm examining emotions in AI-generated images and implications for emotional bias in social media/journalism. I'm also researching technical methods to mitigate AI emotion bias. See more on my research page.

At Capitol Tech University, I conducted a literature review on modern AI ethical dilemmas. For example, when a self-driving car crashes, should it protect the driver or the pedestrians? How should AI allocate resources when two critically ill patients simultaneously arrive at the ER? I examined various commentaries on these dilemmas and deliberated theirethical implications through major philosophical frameworks.