About / Research Interests
I am a Master's student at the University of Waterloo, supervised by Prof. Sirisha Rambhatla. My research focuses on safe post-training adaptation of large language models (LLMs), spanning tamper-resistance evaluation and parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) methods.
Publications
SubTrack++ : Gradient Subspace Tracking for Scalable LLM Training
Training large language models (LLMs) is highly resource-intensive due to their massive number of parameters and the overhead of optimizer states. While recent work has aimed to reduce memory consumption, such efforts often entail trade-offs among memory efficiency, training time, and model performance. Yet, true democratization of LLMs requires simultaneous progress across all three dimensions. To this end, we propose SubTrack++ that leverages Grassmannian gradient subspace tracking combined with projection-aware optimizers, enabling Adam's internal statistics to adapt to subspace changes. Additionally, employing recovery scaling, a technique that restores information lost through low-rank projections, further enhances model performance. Our method demonstrates SOTA convergence by exploiting Grassmannian geometry, reducing training wall-time by up to 65% compared to the best performing baseline, LDAdam, while preserving the reduced memory footprint.
News
Making powerful AI more accessible to everyone
Featured in UWaterloo News for our work on SubTrack++, an advanced training technique that accelerates large language model pre-training by up to 65% while maintaining state-of-the-art accuracy — helping democratize AI by reducing computational costs.
Experience
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Dec 2024 – Present
Machine Learning Research Assistant
University of Waterloo, Critical ML Lab -
Jan 2024 – Present
Undergraduate Research Assistant
University of Waterloo, UAV Flight Path Planning Optimzation w/ Prof. Fatma Gzara -
Sep – Dec 2023
ML Software Developer Intern
CoreAVI, Research and Innovation Team -
Jan – Apr 2023
Innovation Catalyst Intern
Nuclear Promise X (NPX), Rapid App Development Team -
May – Aug 2022
System Administrator Intern
CoreAVI, IT Operations Team -
Sep – Dec 2021
Business Systems Intern
Nissan, Nissan Canada Finance Business Systems Team -
Jan – May 2021
IT Solution Specialist Intern
Sentia, IT Operations Team -
Jun – Aug 2020
Digital Retention Analyst Intern
University of Waterloo, Department of Management Engineering
Education
MASc, Management Engineering and Sciences (Thesis)
Supervised by Prof. Sirisha Rambhatla
BASc, Management Engineering (Computing Option)
Leadership
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Sep 2025 – Present
Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Director
Women in Engineering (WiE), University of Waterloo- Served as primary point of contact for 14 industry partners for the WiE Graduate Career Fair; coordinated logistics, schedules, and booth details to ensure an effective employer–student experience.
- Coordinated planning and partner communications for collaboration with the Canadian charity Help a Girl Out (HAGO), including logistics for a panel and period-product collection drive.
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Sep 2019 – Dec 2023
Engineering Ambassador / Orientation Leader & Director
Engineering Society, University of Waterloo- Led 10 leaders delivering programming for 1,800+ first-year students; supported recruitment/outreach.
Projects
ElectriFly — Electric Plane Data Analysis & Decision Support
Built a platform for analyzing flight data from the Pipistrel Velis Electro, the world's first type-certified electric plane. Leverages ML to optimize flight schedules based on weather forecasts and predict battery consumption for Canadian conditions.
With Meenakshi Andoorveedu, Peter Twarecki, Joanna Yang, Vikram Bhatt