Ashwin Somasundaram | Columbia University

About Me

Hello! I’m Ashwin, a graduate student pursuing an MS in Computer Science degree at Columbia University. I graduated with a BS in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Dallas in 2023. My career goal is to advance my knowledge in software development and machine learning to build applications useful to our society. During my time at UT Dallas, I was a part of the Computing Scholars Honors Program and the Hobson Wildenthal Honors College.

In my free time, I enjoy playing basketball, trying out my hand at new tech stacks, and ocassional competitive programming.

News

[June. 2024] Started working at Capital One as a Software Engineer Intern.
[Aug. 2023] Started as a graduate student at Columbia University.
[June. 2023] Started working at Goldman Sachs as an Engineering Summer Analyst.
[April, 2023] Presented my research on perception for autonomous vehicles using dynamic occupancy grids.

Career

Capital One - Software Engineer Intern
Jun 2024 - Aug 2024
Built REST endpoints from SOAP services utilized by 1000+ customers every day using Java, Node and TypeScript deployed on an AWS Lambda to decrease legacy infrastructure costs by 90%. Designed the Lambda instance to directly interact with the SQL database and increase resiliency and allow future changes and scalability through AWS.

Goldman Sachs - Engineering Summer Analyst
Jun 2023 - Aug 2023
Building a secure automated workflow (using C#, MongoDB, Angular) which encompasses Microsoft’s Active Directory to manage permissions and access to network resources, and delegate users to different roles in the firm.

Amazon - Software Dev Engineer Intern
May 2022 - Aug 2022
Architected a cross-platform tool utilizing Java, Ruby and AWS DynamoDB to enable customizable service configurations through website. Reduced developer hours by 160/year. Also implemented a caching mechanism to store recent config values, reduced number of API calls made to the website.

Credera - Software Dev Engineer Intern
Jun 2021 - Aug 2021
Used Python, Apache, Caddy, Gradle to build a zero-downtime deployment environment for client micro-services. Created a local development option which enables remote development on multiple operating systems.

Research

Nova (UT Dallas’s autonomous driving research group): Utilized Python, C++, ROS to build the perception system and hardware interface for the car. Awarded the UT Dallas 2023 Undergraduate Research Scholar Award for my research.
Cognitive Informatics and Statistics Lab: Published research on comparing performances and estimating parameters of cognitive diagnostic learning models across multiple datasets. (mathpsych.org/presentation/783).